How to use MediaWiki By Melissa Aaron Sources: mea36/wink.

How to use MediaWiki

ByMelissa Aaron

Sources:http://meta.wikimedia.org/

http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mea36/wink

What is wiki?

A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit and change some available content

This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborate authoring

The wiki records every edit made to a page This makes it easy to restore vandalized pages

or fix an accidental deletion

How do I create an account?

Creating an account is as simple as clicking the Log in / create account link in the top right corner

If you don’t login then the wiki will use your IP address as your username

Some wikis may make you email an administrator to get an account

Navigation and Search

Navigation Main Page – displays the

home page Categories – lists all the

categories that are within the wiki

Recent changes – lists recent changes to the wiki

Random page – directs the user to random page

Search For a quick search just type in

your query and push Search To go directly to a page type

in the title and push Go

Tabs

When you are logged in there are six different tabs on the top of your screen that basically tell you what you are doing

Article – tells you that you are viewing an article If you are on a special page it will say that here

Discussion – this allows you to talk about the page with other users Edit – allows you to edit the page History – lists the page’s history; if you accidentally delete

something, don’t worry, it’ll be in the history Move – moving a page is serious business; make sure you read the

instructions before moving a page Watch – watching allows you to keep track of pages. Any page you

put on your watchlist will appear in bold on when you view Recent changes

Top links

My talk – this page allows other users to talk to you

Preferences – allows you to change your preferences; take a few minutes and look through this

My watchlist – lists all the pages you are watching

My contributions – lists all the changes you have made to pages

Toolbox

All of the options in the toolbox are self explainable

The toolbox changes depending on what namespace you are in

Special pages

Most are the links here are also self explainable This page is important because it provides the user with links that ease the editing

process For example:

Unused files File list Dead-end pages New pages Wanted pages

How to upload a file (1 of 2)

Under Destination filename you can rename the file

When uploading files keep in mind that other people will be viewing them too, so it may be a good idea to give the files descriptive names

Also, include a sentence or two in the Summary box so other users know what you have uploaded

How to upload a file (2 of 2)

Uploadable extensions include:png, gif, jpg, jpeg, ogg, zip, tar, wmv, tiff and tif

Every file you upload gets its own page To view uploaded files

Click Special pages in the toolbox Choose File list

There are two types of files, images and media. Media includes images, but images does not include media. Images include png, gif, jpg, and tif

Editing a page (1 of 15)

You can end up at an editing page two ways Clicking on the edit tab Clicking on a link who’s page doesn’t exist yet

A link who’s page doesn’t contain anything will be red; whereas links with content are blue

When editing a page make sure to use the Show Preview button

This way you don’t clutter the history page with a lot of minor edits

Editing a page (2 of 15)

These buttons are at the top of the text box on the editing page

They give you the code necessary to perform the action you want

Editing a page (3 of 15)

Bold – put three apostrophes on either side of the text. ‘’’text’’’ gives text

Italic – put two apostrophes on either side of the text. ’’text’’ gives text

Bold and Italic – put five apostrophes on either side of the text. ’’’’’text’’’’’ gives text

Editing a page (4 of 15) To make a new page or link to a page in the

wiki use two brackets. [[Page_name]] gives Page name

If the page doesn’t exist it will automatically be made

Use underscores (_) instead of spaces in page names

Page names are case sensitive, so if you named a page “This Page” and you want to refer to it as “this page” you use a pipe ( | ) If you type: Check out [[This_Page|this page]]

the text will show: Check out this page

Editing a page (5 of 15)

External links only use one set of brackets. You need to include http:// [http://google.com] gives [1]

To include a name you just put a space between the address and the name [http://google.com Google] gives Google

Editing a page (6 of 15)

To make a section heading use two equal signs ( == ) ==Section== gives The underline is automatic To make a subsection just at an equal sign to either

side of the text A subsection will not be underlined, just bold

Section headings are good to use because they organize your page

Additionally they automatically make a table of contents at the top of the page

Editing a page (7 of 15)

Since every upload gets it’s own page, inserting an image or media is like making an internal link; you can even use pipes

The only difference is that you have to prefix the filename with “Image:” or “Media:” [[Image:filename.ext]] or

[[Media:filename.ext]]

Editing a page (8 of 15)

When inserting images you have many options Pipes (“|”) separate all the parameters To put the image in a frame just type frame A image with a caption needs to be in a frame

[[Image:filename.ext | frame | caption text]] You can make the image an external link by adding the

link as a parameter You can choose where you want the link to be located; just

add right, left or center as a parameter To make an image a thumb nail use the word thumb To make the image a certain size just add the pixel size

[[Image:file.ext | thumb | caption | 300px | right | [http://google.com Google] ]]

Editing a page (9 of 15)

If you want the editor to ignore the wiki markup then use the nowiki tags (<nowiki>) <nowiki>==Heading==</nowiki> gives

==Heading== On a talk page you should “sign” your

comments Three tildes (~~~) gives your user name Four tildes (~~~~) gives your user name and date

and time Five tildes (~~~~~) give only the date and time

You can make a horizontal line by typing ----

Editing a page (10 of 15)

To make an unordered (bulleted) list just type an asterisk (*) before your text

To go a level deeper add an asterisk (*) To stay at the same level but not show a bullet,

type an asterisk and a colon (*:) before your text

Editing a page (11 of 15)

To make an ordered (numbered) list type the pound sign (#)

The same rules that apply to unordered lists apply to ordered lists

To make a definition list type a semicolon (;) before the word you want to define and a colon (:) before the definition ; Word : Definition

: Another definition

Editing a page (12 of 15)

It is possible to use bulleted, numbered and definition lists all at the same time

Editing a page (13 of 15)

To start a new paragraph you have to insert an empty line (press enter twice)

A colon (:) before text indents a paragraphMultiple colons (::) indent multiple timesTo redirect to another page type:

#REDIRECT [[Pagename]]

Editing a page (14 of 15)

You can make an anchor or link to a section heading on a page

This is like making any other internal link except you put the pound sign (#) before the section name

To link to a section on another page:[[Pagename#section name]]

To link to a section on the same page:[[#section name]]

Editing a page (15 of 15)

Making tables Everything is surrounded by a bracket and pipe ( {| ) Set the border, cellspacing, cellpadding and alignment A pipe ( | ) denotes a different column on a row An exclamation mark ( ! ) does the same thing as a pipe but makes the

text bold A pipe followed by a dash ( |- ) creates a new row

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="center" ! This ! is |- | a | table |- |}

HTML that can be used to edit (1 of 4)

To start a new line insert <br> If you want to write a comment to other editors,

but you do not want people who view the page to see the comment use <!-- --> <!-- text written here will not show up on the page-->

To center information use the center tags (<center> </center>) <center>text placed here will appear in the center of the

page</center> If you want to block your text use the blockquote

tags (<blockquote> </blockquote>) <blockquote>text in here will be indented from both

sides</blockquote>

HTML that can be used to edit (2 of 4)

If you use code tags (<code> </code) when you write code in a wiki the editor changes the font and puts a dotted line around it

If for some reason the code tags don’t work try surrounding your text with pre tags

Pre tags (<pre> </pre>) will ignore wiki markup and will not reformat the text

HTML that can be used to edit (3 of 4)

Span tags (<span> </span>) are recognized by the editor

Span has many attributes, two resourceful attributes are font-variant and style

Surrounding you text in typewriter tags (<tt> </tt>) will make change the font of your text to that of a typewriter

HTML that can be used to edit (4 of 4)

To make super or sub scripts use the  and  tags

The strikeout tag <strikeout> </strikeout> puts a line thru text

The underline tag <u> </u> will underline text

Templates (1 of 4)

Templates are segments of Wiki markup that are meant to be copied automatically into a page

You add them by putting the template's name in double braces ( {{ }} ) {{Template_name}}

To edit the template just click on the link you made to it

Templates (2 of 4)

Some templates take parameters, which you separate with the pipe character ( | )

This means that your template can have replaceable fields where you send in the word that you want to insert in the template

The parameter names are surrounded by three braces ( {{{ }}} )

Templates (3 of 4)

Lets say you made a template {{Biography}} that contained:{{{name}}} was born on {{{date}}} in {{{birthplace}}}.{{{name}}} likes to {{{hobbies}}} and is {{{job}}}.

Now you call the template:{{Biography|name=Jason|date=Feb 21, 1985|birthplace=Philadelphia|hobbies=build stuff|job=a student}}

When you save the page the text will show:Jason was born on Feb 21, 1985 in Philadelphia. Jason likes to build stuff and is a student.

Templates (4 of 4)

Templates don’t have to have parameters You can just write the text you want and when

you call the template the text will appear If you call a template that uses parameters but

you don’t include the parameters then the text will show the parameter names

If you called {{Biography}} the text will show: {{{name}}} was born on {{{date}}} in {{{birthplace}}}.

{{{name}}} likes to {{{hobbies}}} and is {{{job}}}.

Namespaces (1 of 2)

Namespaces can be viewed as folders which separate different basic types of information or functionality

There are 18 namespaces:main (which has no prefix) media, special, and 15 others

The namespace is the prefix of the page For example, whenever possible, you should categorize your pages

[[Category:Category_name]]Here Category is the namespace

Each namespace (except for Special) has a corresponding talk page that can be found at namespace_talk (except for the main page where it is just Talk)

Talk pages allow users to discuss the article or page or communicate amongst each other

Namespaces allow to pages to have the same title but as long as they are in different namespaces they will not conflict with eachother

Namespaces (2 of 2)

main - no prefix, or optionally a colon (this is needed when using the page as template)

Media - or images and other files themselves, as opposed to the image description pages

Special – for special pages, they have no wiki text and are created by the software on demand

User – each user gets a page on the wiki, it is found at User: username

Meta – this is for matters about the project, like guidelines or discussions

Images – for images or other uploaded files, with image description pages

MediaWiki – system messages Template – the default

namespace for templates When you write {{name}} it

refers to the page Template:name

Help - typically used for the MediaWiki User's Guide

Category – each page represents a category of pages, with each category page displaying a list of pages in that category and optional additional text.

Keyboard shortcuts Mediawiki contains many keyboard shortcuts Some important ones are:

Alt – e (edit a page) Alt – f (search) Alt – h (show history) Alt – j (shows what links to that page) Alt – l (opens your watchlist) Alt – o (log in or log out) Alt – p (show preview) Alt – u (upload file) Alt – w (watch this page) Alt – z (main page)

For more go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Keyboard_shortcuts