Transcript How to use MediaWiki

How to use MediaWiki
By
Melissa 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 paragraph
Multiple colons (::) indent multiple times
To 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
<sup> </sup> and <sub> </sub> 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_shortcut
s