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AboutThisSite / EditingBasics
In this section we will touch on the basic editing concepts and features of special interest to PHSNE members. Detailed documentation is available at the Documentation Index. The builtin wiki editor is a markup editor. That is you type in commands, called the markup language, that instruct the wiki engine how you want the text to work. Most users will be familiar with WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editors, e.g word processing software. A markup editor is harder to use for most people, but simpler to implement; so it keeps the wiki software small and easier to maintain. The down side is that is is different from what many people are used to and you have to preview to see what you will get. To practice, you can edit the WikiSandBox which allows any editing except uploading images to the server. You need to obtain a password from the site administrator to edit the sand box. Page Organization
The wiki is a collection of editable pages. The pages are organized into different groups. There are two levels of page naming available. The group name and the page name within that group. Pages may be protected individually and groups of pages can be protected as a group. Thus if you have the group edit password, you can edit any page in the group unless that page has been protected with another password. This page is "EditingBasics" and is in the "AboutThisSite" group. Note that the group and page name appear at the top of every page. Page and group protection is under the control of the administrator. At this wiki non-administrative users can not change the authorizations of groups or pages. Editable Pages and Passwords
PHSNE site editors can edit the pages in their sections. To start editing a page, just go to it, then click the "Edit" link available at the top and bottom of pages. A password form will come up to authorize editing privledges for that group of pages or that specific page. Enter the password you were provided. Once you have given a password in a session, you generally do not need to enter it again. However passwords may timeout and need to be re-entered. Editing Form
Once you are authorized to edit, an editing form will come come up with a scrollable window to enter text and formatting markup for the page. Edit Buttons
At the top of the edit form are edit buttons. Let your mouse cursor hover over each button for a hint at what it does. If no text is selected (i.e. only the cursor was showing), clicking on a button will drop a template of the matching markup language into the edit form at the cursor. For example, clicking on the first button " If text in the edit form is selected when you click the button, it will be enclosed in the markup language corresponding to the formating specified by the button. Under the Edit Form
Under the text window are boxes to enter a summary description of your edit changes, your name (or initials), and a check box to tag minor edits. The minor edit tag is useful since it is possible to call up the history of edits on a page and not see all of the small changes that were marked as minor. The wiki maintains a history of all changes made to a page over time, so a page editor can return the page to a prior version. Below the summary and author boxes are some buttons to apply the edits you have made. It is a good idea to use Preview to check out your results before saving them to the page. Also if you have extensive edits that you want to continue working on later, you can click "Save as draft". Your edits will be saved for you to return to the next time you edit the page. Below these buttons are some brief hints to remind you of the basic markup language. Last on the edit page, if you have previewed the page edits, the preview will appear below the edits hits. The preview is not perfect. For plain text it works well, however images may not be shown; thus formatting make not look exactly correct around images until you save and see the actual page. Text Markup
To learn the basic markup rules see pmWiki Basic Editing. This page provides examples of the basic markup language for the wiki. Links
You can include links to other web sites and to pages within this wiki. See Basic Editing for instructions. Tables
The wiki markup language allows you to create typical tables. See Tables for guidance in creating basic tables. For more complex table needs, see TableDirectives. Images
The wiki markup language allows you to include images from other sites and to upload image files to this wiki. See Image Examples. Detailed Documentation
Detailed documentation is available at the Documentation Index. |