Editing a Wikipage

From IslandVision

This page describes the main steps involved if you want to edit or add a page on this wiki.

Contents 1 Becoming a User 2 Editing an Existing Page 3 Creating a New Page 4 Adding an Event 5 Other Resources

Becoming a User

In order to post comments, discussion items, articles, etcetera to this web site, you must join. Becoming a user enables you to share and collaborate on information relevant to action agenda items, and more.

The joining process includes two steps. First, you must create a user log in account. Second, you must contact the webmaster so your user account can be given the required access privileges.

In summary, you can become a user by:

1. Creating a login account, and
2. Sending an email to the islandvision.org webmaster requesting editing privileges.

In your email request for membership, please include something about who you know in the organization, how you heard about us, and what are your interests in the organization. The information in the request will only be used to establish the legitimacy of the request.

Editing an Existing Page

The first thing you need to do is log in to the site. (If you are not yet a member, see the previous section.) Click the Log In link in the upper right hand corner and then enter your user name and password.

Next, navigate to the page you want to edit. Above main content and below the pictures there should be an edit tab. Clicking that will bring you to the Editing page, which contains a large text box in which you can type. (Note: if the page contains sections then you may see a [edit] box to the upper left of the section. You can also press that to edit the text. The difference is that the edit link above the page allows you to edit the entire page, not just the specified section.)

The text in a wiki doesn't require HTML format (although it can interpret HTML if you know it). Instead, you can just begin typing what you want to write. There are a few basic things you'll want to how to do to start out, including

1. Basic formatting,
2. Headings,
3. Lists (like this one!),
4. Links, and
5. Multimedia

A good reference on this is located here. I keep a printed out version handy when I'm modifying pages.

So, as a most basic example, if you want to bold some text, you enclose it with three single quotes as

'''bold text''' 

and the result is bold text.

A couple of other hints and suggestions:

• When I see a page with formatting I like, I edit the page to see how the formatting was coded.
• You can't really screw anything up. So, relax and just play with the formatting.
• There are a set of 11 buttons above the text box on the editing page. The functions of each of those buttons are explained here. If using those buttons make it easier for you, great! All they do is insert the proper wrapper around the given text.

Finally, when you are done editing, press the Save page button at the bottom of the page, outside of the text box, and that's it. If you don't want to save your edits, press the cancel link.

Creating a New Page

To create a new page, you need two things:

• a relevant name for it, and
• a place where it links from. (having a page that isn't linked from anywhere isn't very useful!)

Then, go to the page you are linking from and desribe the link and surround the name with double brackets, as

 here is my page on [[Ecological Footprinting]] 

When you then save those edits, the word Ecological Footprinting will appear as a red hyperlink, which indicates the page does not exist. (note this example isn't actually clickable) Click on your hyperlink and you will see a screen that allows you to edit the new page.

Adding an Event

You can adding an event to the calendar using the following steps.

• The event is its own article or page. While this may seem a little cumbersome, it shouldn't really cause you any difficulty.
• Create a new page and make the title something descriptive about your event, such as January 2009 Director's Meeting.
• Edit the page. For the calendar to pick it up, you need to add two tags, such as:

[[Category:Events]]
[[Category:2008/01/15]]

On the first, use the exact syntax, and on the second, modify it to be whatever date you want. Note the format is year/month/day.

• For the rest of the article, provide whatever relevant information people might need, including at least a short description of the event, the date and time, and the location.
• Save the page, as you normally would, and that's it. Your event should show up on the calendar and event list.

Now, if you want to also have the event listed on another page, such as a project page, you can do so through a process called Transclusion. This simply entails adding the name of the page to insert, for example using the above page title, add the following text to your page in the spot where you want the event description to reside

{{:January 2009 Director's Meeting}}

This should cause your short description, date and time, and location information to be inserted into the current page.

Other Resources

The IslandVision website is built on the WikiMedia platform, and so that website is filled with useful information and details about how to edit pages.

• For background and a complete, thorough, and authoritative explanation, see Help:Starting a new page.
• For some information about editing, see Help:Editing

You may also find it useful to go to the wikimedia page and just search for what you are interested in.