How to Wiki
From Eduwiki
This is an evolving page to give a quick summary of how to use the wikis on the CSUN LearningNet. There is a lot more to wikiing but this page will get you started.
Contents |
How to Edit a Page
To start editing a Wiki page, click on the "Edit this page" or click on a red link. This will bring you to the edit screen. Buttons at the top provide syntax for some of the common formatting (see below). Below this the large text box is for the content of the page. Type your text here with whatever formating tags you need.
Below this is a summary line. this is an optional description of the changes that you are making. It is seen when someone looks a the history of the page. Finally you have the option of showing a preview of your page or saving the page. With the preview you will see your changes at the top and the edit window at the bottom. Your page is not saved when you preview it. If you do not save the page, all your edits will be lost (sometimes you can use the back button to recover edits if there is an error).
If your page has many sections - defined by the headings - you can click on the word "edit" next to a heading to edit only that section of the page.
Each page also has a discussion page that allows people to make comments without changing the contents of the page. Click on the discussion tab at the top of the page to add comments (if the discussion tab is red - no comments have been made yet).
Section headings
Headings organize your writing into sections. To do this, place = signs on either side of the heading. For example, ==my heading== gives a section heading. Three equal signs ===my subheading=== will create a subsection. More equals gives smaller headings.
Using more equals signs creates smaller and smaller subsections.
Formatting Text
The toolbar above the edit box has icons for different type of formating (bold, links images etc). You can click on any of these and it will put formatting on the highlighted text. For example the first icon that allows you to BOLD text by highlighting the text first the click on the B icon on the toolbar.
- Bold and Italics
You can make italics or emphasized text by putting two apostrophes before and after. Three apostrophes will emphasize it strongly. Five apostrophes is even stronger.
For example if you type '''this is bold''' it gives you this is bold
- Carriage returns
Putting a single return into the text
has no effect. Two returns (a blank line) gives you a blank line. You can break lines with <br>
without starting a new paragraph.
Four hyphens in a row will give you a horizontal line
- Fonts
Most wiki pages use the default fonts, but if you have a need to change the font ...
- Lists
You can create a bulleted list by simply putting an asterix (*) at the beginning of a line. Two asterix is a sub-bullet:
* item 1 * item 2 ** subitem 2_1 * item 3
gives
- item 1
- item 2
- subitem 2_1
- item 3
You create a numbered list with the # character instead of the * (computer will do the numbering)
New Paragraph
- A colon indents a line or paragraph.
Links
There are two types of links - internal links to wiki pages and external web links.
Internal Links
Internal wiki links use the double square brackets [[ ]] . All that is needed is the name (exact spelling) of the wiki page you wan to link to.
External Links
External HTML links use single square brackets [ ] and the URL of the link. For example the following code:
[http://www.csun.edu]
produces a link with a footnote style reference number [1] The blue arrow indicates that this is an external link.
If you prefer to have clickable text instead of the number you simply leave a space after the URL and then put your text. This code:
[http://www.csun.edu the csun webpage]
produces a link with text: the csun web page
EDIT - also you can just put the URL in and the wiki will do the right thing with it: http://www.csun.edu
Adding a New Page
Creating new pages in mediawiki is easy. Just think of the name of the page you want and add. Then edit the page you are on to create an internal link with double square brackets -- [[page name]].
Save the page and you will see a red link to this page. A red link indicates a page that has not been started yet. Click on the red link to create the page and edit it. You will be able to change anything about this page in the future, except its name. Once a page has been created you can delete the link to it. This creates an "orphan" page (not linked from anywhere) but does not delete the page.
- Example: the weather in London
- First letter of target name is automatically capitalized
- You can use alternative text for the link with a vertical line in the wiki link [[the weather in London|Links to nonexistent pages]] gives the link Links to nonexistent pages
Using Images
To incorporate your image in an article you need to either
- make a link to an image on the web
- upload the image to the wiki (some wikis disable this for security reasons - not ours)
Embedding web images
To link to an image on the web you will need the complete URL - for example http://www.csun.edu/test/images/CSUNwordmark200t.gif then just put the URL into the text. Here the URL is on a line by itself:
Uploading images
To upload a picture to the wiki you first create a wiki Image link. The link will initially be red - then you click on it and you will be promted to upload the file.
To create the link use the double square brackets [[ ]] starting with "Image:" and the name of the file. If you dont know the name of the file you will upload you will need to change the "Destination File name" when you upload.
[[Image:Glass-Ball.jpg|image caption]]
When you create this it will be a red link. Click on it to go to the upload page. Choose your image and click upload. If the actual file name is different from what you put into your link you will need to either a) set the "Destination File name" to what you put in your link, or b) go back to your link and correct the filename. If there is not a match then your image will not show up.
Notice the image caption - this will show if the user leaves their mouse over the image, or if you create a frame (use "|frame"). Unfortunately image resizing is not currently working on our wikis so we are stuck with only one size (this is a CSUN server problem).
[[Image:Teaching3.jpg|frame|center|like this pict?]]
more information can be found at Extended Image Syntax page but only some of these functions work for us.
Uploading files
A limited number of file types can be uploaded to the wiki including pictures (jpeg or gif) documents (doc, pdf and ppt). Some types like images or pdf files can be shown within the wiki page. Others like word documents can only be linked for downloading.
To upload files click on the "Upload File" link in the Toolbox (lower left side). Select the file and upload it to the site. Every uploaded file has a page associated with it named Image:myfile .
You can also upload by creating a link to a file that is not yet uploaded - then clicking on the red link. This takes you to the upload page. As with images you need to make sure the name of the file you upload matches your link. For example if you create this link:
[[Media:filetoupload.doc]]
Then the link will appear red and you can click it to upload the file (link createing a new wiki page)
Displaying or Downloading files
Once a file is uploaded you can link to it in your page.
To show an object in a page you create an Image link:
[[Image:myfile.pdf]]
Some wikis allow you to specify the size of the image or a caption. That is not currently implemented at CSUN
To create a link that allows users to download a file use the Media link:
[[Media:mydocument.doc]]
In order to change the link text (the blue text that users can click on, add a vertical bar and text after the file name. For example to have a link that says file to download add "|file to download" inside the brackets:
[[Media:filetoupload.doc|file to download]]
Site Administration
Administrators can perform the following tasks:
Change toolbox and navigation links
edit the wiki page "MediaWiki:Sidebar" and create a bulleted list - top level bullets are boxes and the second level bullets are list items. For each list item put the label first than a vertical line (|) and the page name.
