Help:Short wiki tutorial

From BayTeam

Help
Wiki
About (overview) FAQ Help Quick tips Tutorial
Navigation
Portals Categories Searching
Editing
Adding article Formatting Linking Tables Redirects Renaming/deleting Uploading images
Policies and guidelines
Logging in
Agility

This short wiki tutorial shows you how to do some simple editing and actions in MediaWiki, the software used for this BTWiki site. Do each step in the tutorial.

Contents 1 Useful tips 2 Open another browser window 3 Log in or create account 4 Authenticate your email address 5 Basic search and edit 6 Basic formatting and linking 7 Wildcard search, headings, and watchlist 8 History and talk pages 9 User page, leaving local messages, and email 10 Advanced tips

Useful tips

Consider reading Help:Quick wiki editing and usage tips, a brief summary of most basic things you'll need to know.

Open another browser window

Open another browser window so that you can read this tutorial at the same time that you do the actions. Use your browser's New Window (or similar) on the File menu and go to http://www.bayteam.org/wiki/.

Log in or create account

Logging in is important because the page Histories show who made edits and you can sign your posts easily, too.

1. Check whether you're logged in with your wiki username:
   • If the upper right corner displays log out, you're good! Skip to the next Tutorial section.
   • If it displays log in/create account, click that link.
2. On the log in / create account page, if you previously created a username and password, type them and click Log in. When it's accepted, you're good! Go to the next Tutorial section.
3. Username: If you're a Bay Team member, we'll create a username for you. If you don't have one or don't remember it, contact the webmaster.

   If you're not a Bay Team member and haven't previously created a username, invent one now--something simple that you'll remember and that other BTWiki users will recognize. (e.g., FSmith if that's what people know you by, or JaneDoe; don't use your whole email address.) But note: At the moment, non-Bay Teamers can't edit pages.

4. Type:
   • your preferred username
   • preferred password (twice where indicated)
   • your complete email address (this will allow other users to contact you without displaying your entire email on a web page)
   • your full name if you didn't already use it as your username
5. Click Create new account.

Authenticate your email address

1. Click my preferences in the upper right.
2. Make sure that you have an email address entered. If not, do so and Save your changes.
3. If you see this text displayed in the email section:

   Your email address is not yet authenticated. No email will be sent for any of the following features.

   1. Click this link:

      Confirm your e-mail address

   2. On the new display page, click Mail a confirmation code.
   3. When you receive the email at your specified email address, follow the link given in the email to complete authentication.
   4. Redisplay my preferences to be sure that you no longer have the authentication notice.

Basic search and edit

1. In the search box to the left, type sandbox and click Go or press Return.

   This displays the "Sandbox" article.

2. Read the text above the line.
3. Click the edit tab.

   This displays an editable page.

4. Below the line (------), type Bay Team also offers CPE agility..
5. Click Show preview.

   This displays the page as it will look if you save your edit and allows you to continue editing.

6. In the Summary box below the edit area, type doing tutorial and click Save page.

Basic formatting and linking

Still on the sandbox page:

1. Click the edit tab.
2. Put two single quotes on either side of also, to italicize it, like this:

   ''also''

3. Click Show preview.
4. Put three single quotes around your entire sentence, to bold it:

   '''Bay Team ''also'' offers CPE agility.'''

5. Click Show preview.
6. Put double square brackets around CPE, to turn it into an internal link (there is already an article in BTWiki titled "CPE"--trust me--):

   [[CPE]]

7. In the Summary, type still doing tutorial and click Save page.

   The word CPE is now an active link (this means that an article with this title already exists). Click it to display the "CPE" article.

Read more about creating links

Wildcard search, headings, and watchlist

1. In the search box, type sandbox surrounded by asterisks (*) and press Return or click Go:

   *sandbox*

   This displays a list of articles whose titles or content contain the word sandbox.

2. In the list of Article title matches, click the link for the article titled "Sandbox".
3. Click the edit tab.
4. Insert a heading above your "Bay Team also offers..." text like this, using your name and two equal signs on either side:

   ==Fred's heading==

5. Type something useful into the Summary box.
6. Turn on the Watch this page checkbox.
7. Click Save page and see what the header looks like.
8. In the upper right corner, click my watchlist.

   This displays a list of the most recent edits to all articles in your watchlist, who made the edits, and when. Most likely, "Sandbox" is the only article in your list so far.

9. Click the name of the "Sandbox" article to return there.
10. Click edit, remove all the text that you've added below the line, type removing tutorial text in the Summary box, and click Save page.

History and talk pages

Every article has its own discussion page, where people can discuss the content of the article or ask questions or explain why they modified the article, and so on. This is also called the article's talk page.

Still displaying the "Sandbox" article:

1. Click the discussion tab.

   This displays the Sandbox article's "talk" page.

2. Click the article tab to return to the Sandbox article.
3. Return to the talk page. (click discussion again.)
4. Click edit--now you're editing the talk page.
5. Type something like I'm having a good time here , then type four tildes (~~~~), and save the page.

   You'll see that the tildes inserted your username and datestamp.

6. Click the history tab.

   This displays a history of all edits to this article's talk page (which you're currently viewing).

7. Return to the article page (click article again).
8. Click the history tab. This displays the article's edit history.
9. Try the following:
   • Click on an earlier date to see what the page looked like on that date.
   • Go BACK (browser button) and click the cur (short for current) link on any of the history lines.

   This displays the differences between that version and the current version. On the left are any old paragraphs that have changed or been deleted and on the right are any new paragraphs or the changed paragraphs. Differences between changed paragraphs are shown in red.

User page, leaving local messages, and email

1. Go to the history of the "Sandbox" article.
2. Click your username in one of the history lines.

   This displays your user page (it might be empty and ready for editing if you're a new user). You can put anything you want here, such as your dog's names, what kind of agility you do, what your role is at The Bay Team, or anything else at all that you want other users to know about you.

3. Click email this user in the left sidebar near the bottom. If the user (like you) specified an email address when they created their wiki username and authenticated it, this allows people to send them email. You can test sending yourself an email.
4. Click the discussion tab to display your user talk page.

   Just as with articles, each user has a talk page. You can leave other users messages on their user talk page and, when they next display a wiki page, they'll see the message "You have new messages". They can then click that link to go directly to their user talk page to see what you typed for them.

5. To test this (it might not be immediate if I'm away from my email), go to webmaster's user page and send me email saying that you want to test the wiki user talk page. When I get your email, I'll leave a message on your user talk page.

Advanced tips

Useful editing notes:

• To create bulleted lists, put an asterisk (*) at the beginning of each line.
• To create a numbered list, put a hashmark (#) at the beginning of each line.
• To indent a line, put a colon (:) at the beginning of the line.
• To make a sort of "code" line, leave a space at the beginning of the line.

Useful organizing note:

• You can group multiple articles into automatically gathered categories by editing the article and placing a [[Category:name of category]] command at the end of the text.

  For an example of the result, click the Help category name at the bottom of this article.

Useful linking notes:

• Links are case sensitive except for the first character (so [[meet me in st. louis]] is not the same as [[Meet Me In St. Louis]]).
• You can "pipe" links to display simplified text; for example, [[meet me in st. louis | meet me]] displays meet me but links to the page titled "meet me in st. louis".