How To Edit Pages - Quickstart

Editing Pages

If you are allowed to edit pages in this site (only members can edit), simply click on the edit button at the bottom of the page you wish to edit. This will open an editor with a toolbar palette containing options for adding a table of contents, headers, bold text, italic text, quotes, tables, bullet points, numbered lists, links, images, footnotes, and bibliographical references; though you can, of course, just simply type in some text.


Adding New Pages

To add a new page, just create a link on an existing page to the new page by typing, e.g. [[[new page name]]] or [[[new page name|text to display]]]. Save your edit, follow the link which appears (which should have a different colour if the page does not exist) and create a new page and edit it. Or you could create a new page by typing a name for the page into the Add a new page box on the side menu but you will still need to create a link to the new page somewhere. Don't forget to add a parent to your page (usually the name of the page where you created a link to your new page) which will add breadcrumbs links to the top of your page, and will make sure that it shows up in the Site map. You can set the parent by clicking on the options button at the bottom of your new page.


Adding Links

To add links to other pages on the wiki you just need the actual URL page name and not the full URL, e.g. [[[how-to-edit-pages]]]. Bear in mind that some pages on the wiki have a different URL name from the page title, so, for these, remember to use the one given in the URL, and you can use, e.g. [[[steppenfreak-zainabb-hull|Steppenfreak]]] for such pages. For external links just type the url, e.g. http://www.lulu.com. To display alternative text for external links use a single square bracket and just type the text to display one space after the URL, e.g. [http://www.lulu.com Lulu]. To make the link open into a new window or tab place an * directly before the URL, e.g., *http://www.lulu.com.


Adding Images

To display images that you have uploaded to a page (you can do this by clicking on files at the bottom of the page, then on upload new file and follow instructions) use, e.g. image.jpg, though please note that files uploaded this way will, I believe, only work on the page they are uploaded to. For images hosted on an external site use, e.g. [[image http://yahoo.com/images/wiki/lulu/uk_wiki_lulu_logo.jpg]], and to make the image open a link when clicked on use, e.g. [[image http://yahoo.com/images/wiki/lulu/moule_cover_medium.jpg link="*http://www.lulu.com/content/756599"]]. Please note that we are only allowed 100Mb of images on this site so the more images that members can host on their own websites the better. For thumbnails of book covers etc it would seem that Lulu is okay with us linking directly to the thumbnails on the Lulu site.


Copying Code From Other Pages

Clicking on the options button and then on the view source button will show you the coding of any of the pages on the wiki, so if you see something that you would like to use on your own pages you can copy the code and change it to suit your needs. Alternatively, you can click on edit and copy and paste the code directly from the edit box, but beware of unintentionally altering any of the page, and just click on cancel rather than save when you are done copying. I personally use two tabs (or you can use two separate browser windows) to switch between the page being copied from and the page being copied to, and this is a quick method for creating page content. If you do unintentionally alter another page see the Reverting to an Earlier Version of a Page section below.


Reverting to an Earlier Version of a Page

You can do this by clicking on the history button and then clicking on the boxed R next to the version of the page you want to revert the edit to. This is only really necessary if you, or someone else, has really messed a page up. Clicking on the boxed V will show you the previous version(s) of the page. This last function is obviously useful, and occassionally amusing, if you want to check out how the pages looked many moons ago, and to make sure that you revert to the correct version.


Wikidot Help Pages

Although creating and editing pages is relatively easy, there are a lot more options available that will enable you to create attractive and informative pages. Please visit Documentation pages and Wiki Syntax pages to learn more. If you find that you are in need of any help please post to the forum, and I'm sure that we will try our best to help.