Help:Editing
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Editing Existing Articles
Editing wiki articles is easy. Simply login and click the edit tab at the top of the article of interest.
Creating New Articles
Want to create a new article instead? Simply create an internal link with the title of your new article. When you click it you'll be presented with the standard editing page therefore presenting you with an opportunity to write the content of your new article.
Wiki Markup
Almost all the content on this wiki is plain text and requires no forward knowledge of wiki markup to edit. Simply type your content directly into the editing page.
And in cases where you need to make use of special formatting or content, the most commonly used attributes are applicable to your text through buttons on the editing page.
Should you require more robust text formatting capabilities, wikipedia has a very thorough article on how to edit a page that covers wiki syntax if you care to learn. MediaWiki User's Guide is also a good read.
But don't let markup, formatting, or even our own style guide scare you. It's far more important that you share your knowledge than make it presentable. Even if the result is full of typos, grammatical errors or for some strange reason the page breaks, it can all be easily fixed by experienced editors.
Editing Page User Interface
On the editing page you'll find a toolbar, editing textbox, summary textbox, and some checkboxes. It's pretty self-explanatory but it's worth covering if your a newcomer.
To edit or add content to an article you type directly into the large editing textbox. You should strive to adhere to the style guide but we won't burn you at the stake if you don't. As long as you make a conscious effort that's all we could hope for.
The Toolbar
The toolbar located above the editing text box greatly simplifies editing pages. Each button provides you with a means to apply the proper wiki markup to a selection of text.
Here's an overview of each button.
- This button will bold the selected text.
- This button will itallicize the selected text.
- This button will change the selected text into an internal link. (A link to an article here on modwiki.)
- This button will change the selected text into an external link. (A link to a web page outside of modwiki.)
- This button will change the selected text into a new section.
- This button will change the selected text into an image link.
- This button will change the selected text into a media link.
- This button will change the selected text into a mathmatical formula.
- This button will cause the selected text to be ignored by wiki markup language.
- This button will insert your username and datestamp at the location of the text cursor.
- This button will insert a horizontal break at the location of the text cursor.
The Summary Textbox
The summary textbox is your way of providing other modwiki users a summary of your changes to an article.
When members view recent changes your summary will appear next to a link to the article you've changed.
It's very important that you leave a summary so that people do not have to view the page to see what changes were made.
Checkboxes
When the This is a minor edit checkbox is checked a lowercase m will appear on the recent changes page next to your edit. This signifies that you've made a minor change to the article.
For instance, correcting spelling is minor. Rewording a sentence is not.
When the Watch this page checkbox is checked you will recieve notification when the corresponding article has been changed.
Saving and Previewing
Use the Show preview button to preview your article. This will cause a preview page to appear allowing you to see your changes without actually updating the article.
When you are satisfied with the changes click the Save page button. This will save your changes to the article.
JTidy
An alternative to the web based editor is a program called JTidy. It's handy for converting HTML markup to wiki markup should the need arise.
