Difference between revisions of "WikiUsage:Adding content"

Latest revision as of 03:02, 21 January 2009

This is a beginners tutorial/manual.

First of all: don't be afraid to do something wrong!

I know from personal experience wiki's can give you the feeling that entering new stuff is harder than doing so on a 'regular' messageboard, but no worries, it's pretty painless, and best of all: if you really mess things up, there's a 'step back' function to undo any errors. Even if YOU do not know how to do this, other people do, and they will rectify problems for you. So no worries!

There are different ways to enter new content, comments, corrections in a Wiki, and we're trying to make it as easy for you as possible.

Adding stuff to existing pages

This is the most straightforward way to start out, so I suggest you try this when you're new to wikis.

Step one:

go to the page you want to add some stuff to and click the "edit this page" tab at the top of that page. You will now see the page, complete with confusing weird characters, like "[" etc. but don't worry, just type away. There's a preview button to look how things errr... look, but I suggest to just type away, and don't worry about the looks. If it really looks wrong, other people will beautify it, no worries.

Step two:

Click the 'save page' button at the bottom. Congratulations! You just added some content!

Step three:

Repeat, and if you feel inclined to learn some more about how all those fancy titles and so on are made, just take a hard look at the weird characters in the texts. It really isn't that hard, and you'll soon find yourself editing and beautifying other people's entries. That is how wikis work.

Starting a new subject from scratch

See the adress bar? It now says "http://www.newmars.com/wiki/index.php/Wikipedia:Adding_content"

If you want to make an entry called, say "Flowers on Mars," you just delete the "Wikipedia:Adding_content" part and replace it with "Flowers_on_Mars", and keep in mind that spaces are replaced with "_" (underline) then press enter. You now get a new, empty page that you can do your magic in. You might notice that, once you're editing a page, the adressbar displays things a bit differently, the "php/yaddayaddayadda" part will be "php?title=yaddayaddayadda". That's normal, so don't worry.

As long as you make the address end to "php/" and then your subject, you're O.K.

So: try to go to the topic "Flowers on Mars"