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WikiIntro

This is a quick intro to using wiki, along with the conventions specific to this one.

Basic Editing

This wiki is open to all people wanting to contribute. To edit a page, click the Edit link at the top or bottom of the page. When you are there, you just edit it using almost-plain-text. That is, 99% of what you write will just be normal typing, with the occasional dash of extra characters to provide a bit of formatting.

Don't forget that when you edit a page, you must provide an author name. If you want to practice anything here, use the WikiSandbox, it's what it's for.

All edits are stored in version control (see the History link for a page), so don't worry that you're going to be erasing information.

Formatting Markup

There are a few that are pretty common, these are:

• To end a paragraph, put a blank line in. If you don't, the two lines join together. \\ will force a line-break where you are.
• !, !!, !!! to make headings. ! is a big heading, !!! is a small one.
• To stop something turning into wiki markup (like I've done here to show it), wrap [= =] around it.
• A * at the start of a line turns it into a bullet point. Use ** and *** and so on for nesting. You can also use #, ## and so on for numbered bullet points.
• Surrounding something in ''...'' makes it italic, '''...''' makes it bold. Combining them, '''''...''''' gives you both. @@...@@ will give it a typewriter-like font. This is good for showing commands.

More information on what you can do is available on the Basic Editing page, and in the box just below the save button.

Links

Links are something that are pretty commonly needed. There are two main types of links: internal and external. Internal links are ones within the wiki, external links go to pages that aren't in the wiki.

• The simplest type of link is one written in CamelCase. This will automatically turn into a link, unless you tell it not to (by using [=...=] or prefixing it with a `). One of these links goes to a page in the same group, for example HomePage.
• Sometimes you'll want to provide your own text, this can be done like this: [[HomePage | A link to the home page]], which becomes: A link to the home page.
• If you want to link to a page on another group, you can do it like: [[PmWiki/Documentation Index]], which becomes: Documentation Index.
• External links are very similar, just put the URL in, e.g: [[http://www.pmwiki.org | The PmWiki site]] becomes: The PmWiki site

More information on this is also on the Basic Editing page, and at the bottom of the edit page.

Wiki Conventions

Creating Pages

To create a page, simply create a link to it from another page. When you save that page, the link will appear with a question-mark, for example: NoSuchPage?. When you follow that link, you can edit the new page. If you are creating a page, think about what group it belongs to, and put it there. Maybe create a group if it's likely that there will be related things. However, moving pages around is really easy, so feel free to create them and worry about that later if you prefer.

Groups

The wiki is organised into groups, and allows each group to behave like a sub-site if it makes sense to do so. This means that things about Linux can go in the Linux. group, for example. Each group has a HomePage page which is used to provide a way to organise the information in that group. Each group has a sidebar which can is always called GroupName/SideBar. You can put that directly into the URL bar to get to it if you want to create one especially for that group.

Commenting on pages

If you want to have a discussion on a page, just create a section at the bottom for it, and write what you like. If you end with ~~~~, the wiki will insert your details. You can use indentation to do simple threading, and if you want to be really fancy, use colours:

More Information

There are many features available that haven't been mentioned here. The Documentation Index covers just about anything, and the Text Formatting Rules page tells you everything there is to know about making your text look pretty.