Table of Contents

Contributing

This page is a start point in helping people to contribute to the wiki.

Here is what you need to do:

  1. login as a user (using the link in the top right and the details you got in your welcome email)
  2. read through the site to either find a page you think your contribution would be appropirate to or one where there ought to be a link from to a new page on your chosen field of expertise.
  3. play with the sandbox to make sure you understand page editing
  4. if the page you want doesn't exist you need to add a link to it on another page to get it created and then click on the link and create the page (see below for how)
  5. if the page already exists you can edit it and add your material (see below for how)

Editing Existing Pages

login to the website

If you are a registered user you will be able to edit some pages when you are logged in. If you are not sure whether or not you are logged in looked at the top right hand of the web page. If it says 'logout' then you are logged in and can carry on.

If on the other hand it says 'login' then you need to click on 'Login' and give your username and password. Once you are logged in you can continue.

Load the Page you want to edit

To edit a page you first need to have it on your screen. Once you have done that you can click either:

Once you have done this you get the page editor, see below for some outline of how to use it. If you don't have any 'edit' links then it means that you do not have permission to edit that page. If you think that you should, or you want to correct an error, then please send an email to ruberta or the page owner (you should see their name in the tags at the bottom of the page).

Creating new pages

  1. Create a link on an existing page
  2. click on the link
  3. on the new page click on 'create this page' (if visible - otherwise mail ruberta with the link details)
  4. edit the page in the same was as for existing pages

Note that when you create pages the first heading used in the page is usually used as the page title in any links (although there are ways to over-ride this in individual links).

When you create a new page

Most pages should do this automatically, but you should review the tags and ensure that they are appropriate. See Common Tags for details on how to use tags.

Use the Page Editor

Play in the sandbox to try all this out.

You will get an edit box with a toolbar on the top that lets you apply some simple formatting. If you hold your mouse over the icons on the toolbar then it will tell you what the functions are.

The most common bits you may want to type (rather than use the toolbar) are adding links, especially to other pages.

Paragraphs work by just putting a couple of line breaks in. Note you don't need to manually wrap text, let the editor do that itself. Also if you indent text it gets put in a coloured box.

See the Formatting Syntax page to get a full explanation.