Editing Pages

Only those with Wikidot accounts can edit most of the pages in this site, though some pages can only be edited by administrators and moderators, and full site members have more permissions than regular Wikidot members when it comes to renaming pages and files etc. To start, 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. Copyright pages, which contain the word copyright in the url, can only be edited by their creator, or by a Moderator or Administrator. Some templates and examples of coding and modules for use on the pages can be found on the Templates page.

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. 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. You can also add relevant tags to your page by clicking on the Tags button at the bottom of the 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. [[[Drangsturm|Drangsturm or Trench]]] for such pages. For external links just type the url, e.g. http://www.zenvirus.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.zenvirus.com Hugh Cook Website]. To make the link open into a new window or tab place an * directly before the URL, e.g., *http://www.zenvirus.com or [*http://www.zenvirus.com Hugh Cook Website].

Adding Images

To display images on your page you will first need to upload them to the gallery. Go to the gallery and click on files at the bottom of the page, then on upload new file and follow the instructions. When you wish to include the image on your page use, e.g. [[image gallery/example.jpg]]. To diplay the image on the right hand side of the page with text alongside use e.g.:

[[div]]
[[f>image /gallery/charles_fort]]
[[/div]]

at the position where you want your image to appear. To specify a particular size for your image use e.g.:

[[div]]
[[f>image /gallery/charles_fort width="250 px"]]
[[/div]]

For images on the left hand side just substitute f> for f<. Padding can also be added, though I believe that this has to be done in CSS coding. Take a look at the coding for the images on the Games page to see how this works.

Basically, if all images are uploaded to the gallery page then it would be the only page you would ever have to use for images, so /gallery/example.jpg would be all that was needed on any given page. This will also be a useful resource where all of the images on the site can be browsed. Ordinarily, images are uploaded to the particular page on which they are featured, but this makes it difficult for other members to track down images should they also wish to use them and means that duplication might occur; the gallery negates these problems. If you would like your image to appear in an image box with a caption beneath click here for the code needed to produce these.

The best format here for image files such as photos is PNG as these are a lot less lossy than JPGs. For illustrations, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) converted to PNG are highly preferable to any other format, especially for illustrations which are likely to be used on more than one page, and at differing scales. An excellent resource for SVG/PNG public domain clipart can be found at the Open Clip Art Library.

For images hosted on an external site use, e.g. [[image http://photos.google.com/images/hughcook_logo.gif]], and to make the image open a link when clicked on use, e.g. [[image http://photos.google.com/images/hughcook_logo.gif link="*http://www.google.com"]]. Please note that we are only allowed a total of 300Mb of images on this site so the more images that members can host on dedicated image hosting websites like flickr, photobucket or ImageShack, or their own websites, the better, though of course, the possibility is always open to create a sister site where extra images and files can be stored.

Copying Code From Other Pages

Clicking on the options button and then on the Page 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. I personally use two tabs to switch between the page being copied from and the page being copied to, and this is a quick method for creating page content.

Reverting to an Earlier Version of a Page

This is useful if you happen to unintentionally alter any of the pages or decide to undo your edits. 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 all of the previous versions of any page.

Embedding

It is possible to embed a large variety of media on the site, including video, maps, images and website previews. This has the added advantage that such embedded media do not contribute to the 300Mb site allowance for uploaded files. See http://www.wikidot.com/doc:embedding for details of this.

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 the Wikidot Documentation & Help 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.