Revision as of 20:40, January 30, 2009

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Edit a page

You must be a registered user and logged in to edit or create pages in Our Story.

Most of all, we want you to jump right in and start writing your stories and recollections of WSU! If you ever have any questions, please contact us.

To edit a page, click on the "Edit" link in the top right corner of a page, or on an individual section of a page. A page may be protected, meaning not everyone can edit that page.

If a page is not yet created, there will be a "Create" link at the top right of the page, or you can just start editing.

Most of the editing tools will be in the toolbar, which looks very similar to Microsoft Word or other word processors. One special button is labeled "Wikitext." Wikis, like Our Story or Wikipedia, use a special formatting "language." This help page describes many of the wiki formatting codes, but you don't need to learn wiki formatting language to add or edit stories.

When editing or creating a page, please note these requests:

• Add a category or categories to your story. There is some guidance for selecting or making categories on this page: Help:Categories. This will help others navigate Our Story and link related stories.
• Add plenty of links. Links will also help people build Our Story.

Formatting

When formatting a page, you can use the tools at the top of the edit box for most of your needs.

If you click on the "Wikitext" button, which will allow you to format your text using "wiki markup." This consists of normal characters like asterisks, single quotes or equation marks which have a special function in the wiki, sometimes depending on their position. For example, to format a word in italic, you include it in two single quotes like see="See" the="the" table="table" below="below" for="for" common="common" wiki="wiki" formatting="formatting" our="Our" story="Story" ignores="ignores" normal="normal" line="line" to="To" start="start" a="a" new="new" leave="leave" an="an" empty="empty" you="You" can="can" also="also" with="with" html="HTML" tags="tags"><br> or <br/>.

Some HTML tags are allowed, for example <code>, <div>, <span> and <font>.

You can learn more about formatting in a wiki at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text

Preview

It's a good idea to use the 'Show preview' button to see what your change will look like, before you save it. This is also related to tracking changes because every time you save, this is displayed to others as a separate change. This isn't something to worry about too much, but it's good to get into the habit of eliminating mistakes in your own work, by using a preview before saving, rather than saving several minor corrections afterwards.

Text formatting in a wiki

preformatted text is done with
a space at the 
beginning of the line

some preformatted
text with no indentation

How to link

To make a link, you can highlight the text to link and click on the "Link" button (a globe with a chain icon).

• For an external link, paste or type in the full link. For example: http://www.google.com
• For an internal link, paste or type just the page name. This can be a story title, or some other page. For example: "Notes of WSC 1940" or "Help:Editing" (without the quotes) would be the link.
• For a Category link, type "Category:Category_name." For example: the link to type would be "Category:Apple Cup" (without the quotes).

Linking, the wiki formatting way

By default, when you write a link (URL) as is, it will be transformed to an external link.

You can read more about links here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Links

Images

Before you place an image on a page, you must first put the photo or image on Our Story, by uploading the file. "Upload file" is usually an option in the Toolbox in the right sidebar. (You can also upload more than one photo at a time, through the Multiple Upload page.)

You can use the "Image" button at the top of the edit box to place an image, or other file such as sound or video. In the image menu, you can search for your image, resize it, add a caption, and choose alignment on the page.

For example, if you want to put a photo of the 1939 Apple Cup on your page, you would click on your story where you want the photo. Then, click the "Image" button on your editing toolbar (looks like a square with a mountain on a yellow background, similar to Microsoft Word). Search for the photo by typing in the first few letters ("apple"). Some choices will appear. You can then write a caption, resize, or put a frame or border around your photo through the "Special Type" menu.

NOTE: If you want to resize your photo, choose "Thumb" or "Border" in the "Special Type" menu. If you choose "Frame," the photo will not be resized.

When editing a story, you can right-click your image to change "Image Properties."

If you would like to browse available images, you can go to these pages:

• Gallery of new images - If you just uploaded one, you will see it here.
• All images - Shows all of the image files uploaded to Our Story.

You can also find images of WSU at these websites:

• WSU Libraries, Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections - A partner in the development of Our Story.
• WSU Photos Online

Images, the wiki markup way

If you want to include an image by directly coding in the wiki language, the wiki formatting is: [[Image:{name}|{options}]] Where options can be zero or more of the following, separated by pipes:

• thumb, thumbnail, frame, or frameless: Controls how the image is formatted
• left, right, center, none: Controls the alignment of the image on the page
• baseline, sub, super, top, text-top, middle, bottom, text-bottom: Controls the vertical alignment of the image on the page
• {width}px: Resizes the image to the given width in pixels
• Special cases:
  • page=1: Displays the specified page when showing a djvu file
• link={destination}: Allows to link to an arbitrary title, URL or just nowhere (1.14+)
• alt={alternative text}: For changing the alternative text (alt="") of an image (1.14+)

The options can be given in any order. If a given option does not match any of the other possibilities, it is assumed to be the caption text. Caption text can contain wiki links or other formatting.

For more image formatting options and how to create a gallery of images on your page, visit: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images

Tables

Tables may be authored in wiki pages using either HTML table elements directly, or using wikicode formatting to define the table. HTML table elements and their use are well described on various web pages and will not be discussed here. The benefit of wikicode is that the table is constructed of character symbols which tend to make it easier to perceive the table structure in the article editing view compared to HTML table elements.

As a general rule, it is best to avoid using a table unless you need one. Table markup often complicates page editing.

To learn more: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Tables