Help:Editing

From HSU Expertise Directory

The HSU Experts directory is a Wiki that uses MediaWiki software, the same software used by Wikipedia. You can edit and create pages on the expertise directory using the same wiki markup used for Wikipedia.

Any staff, faculty, or administration user can edit most pages in the expertise directory. You need to log in using your HSU ID and password.

Users can be notified if or when a page, including their own, changes. See "watchlisting" for more information.

Editing a wiki is easy! Just type it in like an email. If you want to do more, then read the page below for info on formatting.

[edit] Formatting

You can 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 ''this''

[edit] Paragraphs

Appropedia ignores normal line breaks. To start a new paragraph, leave an empty line. You can also start a newline with the HTML tag <br>.

[edit] Formatting Marks

a space at the 
begin of the line 
creates 
preformatted text

[edit] Links

Here are some variations of two important types of links in the expertise directory: internal links to other pages in the wiki - including files (such as pictures) and external links to other websites.

To add an internal link, enclose the name of the page you want to link to in double square brackets. When you save the page, you'll see the new link pointing to your page. If the page exists already, it is displayed in blue, empty pages are displayed in red.

The first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link has the same effect as typing a space, but is not recommended).

External links are in the form [http://www.example.org link name] (resulting in link name), with the link name separated from the URL by a space. Links without link names will be numbered: [http://www.example.org] becomes [1]. Links with no square brackets will be displayed in their entirety: http://www.example.org.

[edit] Including pages in categories

To include a page in a category, insert [[Category:Category name]] at the bottom of a page. For example, including [[Category:Autonomous technology]] will result in a page being included in the Autonomous technology category. To link to a category page (without including the linking page the page in that category, use the form [[:Category:Category name]] (with a colon before Category). You may notice that if you wish to both link to the category page inline and include the page in that category at the same time, this choice will require including both these forms of Wikitext. To make this more convenient, you can use code that looks like this: {{Catlink|Name of category}} or {{Catlink2|Name of category|Name of page to appear in category}}. If you're categorizing a page for an individual in the expertise directory, use the later form like this so that the page will appear with last name first: {{Catlink2|Name of category|Last name, first name}}

For more on categorizing, see: Help:Categories

[edit] HTML

Some HTML-Tags are allowed in Appropedia, for example <code>, <div>, <span> and <font>.

[edit] Files

Appropedia strongly encourages the use of supporting media as a pedagogical tool. Media that supports multilingual learning is also encouraged. Following are some instructions and guidelines on including media in your page.

[edit] Uploading

Before uploading, please ensure that you have rights to upload and redistribute the file(s) in question and that you in turn grant these rights to others.

1. Save a file on your computer and remember where, i.e. what folder.
   • Make sure to give it a unique name, such as your projectname_description.jpg
   • For photos: Save the photo with no dimension greater than 800 pixels, and do less if big is not necessary
   • For photos: Save the photo rotated in the proper orientation
2. In Appropedia Click "Upload file"
   • This link is located in the menu on the left in the "toolbox"
3. Click "Browse..."
   • This button is located in the Upload file page you now have up
   • This will bring up your operating system's standard file open dialog
4. Browse your computer for you file
5. Choose the file
   1. This will fill the Source and Destination Name of that file into the corresponding text fields.
6. Enter a summary (this step is optional but considerate)
7. Then press the "Upload file" button to finish the upload. This may take some time if you have a slow internet connection.

The preferred formats are JPEG for photographic images, PNG for drawings and other iconic images, and OGG for sounds. Please name your files descriptively to avoid confusion.

Please note that as with wiki pages, others may edit your uploads (and admins may delete them).

Once your file is uploaded you will probably want to put it in your page.

[edit] Avoid huge image files

Huge image files should be avoided - it puts a load on the servers and makes pages load slowly (especially in remote or underdeveloped areas). Usually the file should be compressed to 100 kB or less (200 kB or less for a very large or detailed picture). Raw photos from digital cameras can be more than 1 MB, which is much too large.

An image editing tool can help you make it smaller. An excellent free program for Windows users is Faststone.Here are some instructions for the mac, the file sizes are reported to be a little bigger, but it should work.

[edit] Linking

To put your picture (file) in your page, you link to it by placing double brackets around the name of the file page (as if it was another page). For instance if you just uploaded a file named HSU-Logo-Stacked.gif, you would put double brackets around image:HSU-Logo-Stacked.gif.

Description	You type	You get
Just the picture	[[Image:HSU-Logo-Stacked.gif]]
Thumbnailed	[[Image:HSU-Logo-Stacked.gif|thumb]]
Thumbnailed with caption	[[Image:HSU-Logo-Stacked.gif|thumb|HSU logo]]	HSU's logo
Thumbnailed with caption and location	[[Image:HSU-Logo-Stacked.gif|thumb|left|HSU logo]]	HSU's logo

See tutorial for more options.

[edit] More info

See Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Wikipedia:Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia

If you have a technical question which is not answered here, you may wish to check the Help pages on Wikipedia (as the HSU expertise directory and Wikipedia use the same software.

[edit] External links

• Help pages on Wikipedia
• Table help from Wikipedia