Wiki Tutorial

For a more detailed page on Wikis, a historical perspective and some of its many possibilities see the Wiki page.

This page is more a how-to guide.

As it is a wiki, feel free to edit it.

Wiki editing

Below you can find a cheatsheet with commonly used wikitext mark up.

But first of all, it's good to know is that there are two editors that you can use to edit your text:

Visual editor

• to use it, click Edit
• uses a WYSIWYG editor
• Visual editor user guide

Wikitext editor

• to use it, click Edit source
• uses a specific mark up language: wikitext
• Wiki syntax user guide

cheatsheet

''italics'' 
 
 '''bold''' 
 
 '''''bold and italics''''' 
 
 ==standard header== 
 
 ===next-level header=== (...and so on) 
 
 [[Internal link]] 
 
 [[Internal link|alternate text]] 
 
 [http://example.com text of external link] 
 
 [[Category:Example]] (category tag) 
 
 [[:Category:Example]] (link to category) 
 
 ---- (horizontal line) 
 
 * bulleted item 
 
 # numbered item 
 
 :indentation 
 
 ::double indentation (...and so on) 
 
 ;term : definition 
 
 [[File:Image-name.jpg|thumb|frame|Caption text]]
 
 {{:Transcluded page name}} 
 
 {{Template name}} (call to template) 
 
 #REDIRECT [[Page name]]

editing

How to write on the wiki?

Writing on a wiki is not not very different from writing a blog.

You have a Read and Edit mode.

Edit lets you enter content and make changes to existing content.

While you are editing, you can preview your changes in the Preview window.

Once done editing save the page, otherwise your contribution will be lost.

Title Headings

You can make titles with different hierarchic levels by using "=" as follows:

=Main Title=

==Sub Title==

===Sub-sub Title===

===Sub-sub-sub Title===

You can place content under each of these section

page creation

How to create a page?

In a wiki the information is organized into pages or articles ( no great distinction between the two). If you want to say something about something for which there isn't a page, you create that page and start writing its content.

To create a page create internal links [[name of new page]] for that page

The other easy way to create is to use the search function with the name of the page you want to create. When searching, you are given the possibility to create that page.

Note: For your work you should use sub pages under your user namespace. [[User:yourusername/mypage]]

• Red link = previously non-existing page.
• Blue link = existing page.

Wiki - an existing page

oooooooo - an non-existing page

Links

There are two kinds of links:

• internal (to another wiki page)
• external (to anything outside this wiki)

internal links

So, when you want to make a link to a page on this wiki:

[[name of page]]

For example a link to the Main Page looks like:

 [[Main Page]]

will result in: Main Page

Note: these links are case sensitive.

external links

You can write external links in different ways:

Just by pasting a URL:

https://xpub.nl/: https://xpub.nl/

Using link text:

[https://xpub.nl/ XPUB's website]: XPUB's website

Or as a "footnote"

[https://xpub.nl/]: [1]

red links

Significantly, wikis allow links to pages that do not (yet) exist. These are called "redlinks" (typically they appear in red to differentiate from "blue" normal links). In this was editors can write with links without knowing (or caring) if a given page exists. Redlinks can form a "potential page" or "todo" articles that when created in the future, will already be linked. Non-existent (redlink) Pages do display backlinks even before they are given any content (though they will not appear in Special:AllPages, they can be seen via Special:WantedPages)

Audio-visuals

uploading images

You probably want not only to write, but also to use images, audio and video on the pages you'll be developing.

Wiki allows the following formats:

Medium	Formats
image	png, gif, jpg, jpeg, svg
audio	ogg, mp3
video	ogv, webm, mp4

To upload you can use the picture icon on the menu. It asks you for the file name of the file you are going to upload (they must match) and a caption, if you to say something about that image, video, or audio.

The syntax to insert an image:

[[File:myimage.png|My caption]]

Captions can be added to images by using a vertical bar (the "pipe"):

[[File:myimage.jpg|Caption under the image]] 

Audio

Download the Widgets extension: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Widgets

And copy the full content of this page to your wiki, in a page called "Widget:Audio": https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Widget:Audio

Video files

Using {{#Widget:Video}}

This widget is configured on this page: Widget:Video

You can use it in this way:

 {{#Widget:Video|webm=http://url.to/your.webm|mp4=http://url.to/your.mp4|style=}}
 

For example:

 {{#Widget:Video|mp4=https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/a/af/Traffic_lights.mp4|style=height:200px;float:right;}}
 

Youtube/Vimeo videos

To include, you need:

• the ID of the video you want to include in you page
• to write {{youtube|id}} for Youtube or {{vimeo|id}} for vimeo. Where the id is the sequence of numbers and letters that follow ?v= in Youtube videos url, and vimeo.com/ in Vimeo videos)

Example: {{youtube|A1YYv_J2csk}} {{vimeo|68841788}}

will results in:

http://vimeo.com/68841788

Wiki calendar care

Here's a link to how to add information to the calendar and what do you if it disappears.

Help the calendar disappeared

Changing page titles

Pages' titles can be changed by using the function Move in the top right corner in a dropdown menu next to the star.

The Move page permits you to attribute a new name to the current page. Move lets you effectively rename a page. By default, a move shifts content to the new title, and creates a redirect from the old title to the new one; in this way links to the old page will not break and will simply redirect to the correct page. In this way, a move is consistent with the wiki attitude of keeping history visible.

Move = (Copy and Paste) + (Redirect or Delete)

Deleting pages

Deleting a page is also possible. Note however that a delete is simply a way of marking that page as deleted. While the title will no longer appear in search results or in Special:All pages, the page history can still be viewed.

Citations

(to check) Using the extension Cite, the wiki supports making proper academic style footnotes. It works by putting your reference directly into your text surrounded by the "ref" tag, e.g. <ref>Yaron Koren, p. 3</ref>

Page History / version tracking

(to write)

Special:RecentChanges

Special:RecentChanges

Special:AllPages

Special:AllPages gives an alphabetical listing of all pages. It's a kind of index.

Special:AllPages

Redirect

Redirects add a bit of the thesaurus to the wiki. Redirects can be used to establish synonyms, and to specify a preferred title or term (the page that actually holds the content). Special pages (like the "index" Special:All pages) and functions like "Backlinks" respect redirects and generally show the preferred title.

#REDIRECT [[Better title]]

HTML + CSS

• Simple HTML tags and CSS rules can be used and are allowed by default
• HTML comments work too! <!-- this is a comment -->
• if you want to publish code on a wiki page with syntax highlighting, you can use a <syntaxhighlight> element:

<syntaxhighlight lang="html"> <h1>Hello wiki!</h1> </syntaxhighlight>

Which will look like this:

<h1>Hello wiki!</h1>

nowiki

HTML like tag that allows to include stuff that the wiki won't touch

<nowiki>

Categories

• [[Category: People]]
• Categories can themselves be tagged with categories to create hierarchies
• Extensions exist to make working with (hierarchical) categories easier

To link to a category page without tagging the current page with that category, add a colon at the start.

• See [[:Category:Fish]] produces Category:Fish.

Transclusion

{{:Name of page}}

Templates

Template = Transclusion + Substitution

• Parameters, Named and positional (demo)
• Parser Functions?
• includeonly, ...

To dive into templates, see: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates

Variables

• {{CURRENTPAGE}}
• {{CURRENTTIME}}
• {{CURRENTUSER}}
• {{NUMBEROFPAGES}} ?

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words#Variables

Behavior switches

"Switches"

• __NOTOC__
• __NOINDEX__
• __HIDDENCAT__ : don't show this category

Switches with parameters:

• DISPLAYTITLE: Set the proper title
• DEFAULTSORT: Tell the wiki how to order the page title

{{DISPLAYTITLE:cat}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wales, Jimmy}}

Communication

How do collaborators, editors, proofreaders, coordinators and designers communicate withing this ecosystem ?

Say one totally disagrees with what is said in page where she is collaborating.

There are several ways to go about it.

One of the places that could be used is the talk page.

By the book

A good free online resource is Yaron Koren's Working with MediaWiki. Yaron Koren is a contributor to the MediaWiki software community, particularly around integrating data and journalism (he's the primary author of the Cargo extension).

Some Key Topics

• Navigating: Special:RecentChanges, Special:NewFiles, Special:AllPages, Special:RandomPage
• Wikitext : a "lightweight markup", Headers, etc. (there are also some useful Behaviour Switches like __NOTOC__)
• Section editing (good way to avoid edit conflicts)
• Namespaces: Main, Category, User, Talk
• Redirects & Renaming
• Linking: Name normalization, Subpages
• Media: Images & Files, Audio/Video
• Advanced: Transclusion & Templates, Widgets
• Extensions and Special pages like Special:Version
• Come on get API!