Getting Started

Creating new articles, editing existing articles, and organizing articles into categories are the three main tasks you'll do on any wiki website.

Create an Article

Creating an article in a wiki is as simple as finding something that doesn't exist. A wiki assumes that whenever someone searches for an article and no results are found or clicks on a link to an article that doesn't exist, that someone will want to create that information for the community.

To add an article you will use the Create or Find a Page search tool in the sidebar to see if an article with the same title exists. If it does not exist you can add it by clicking the Edit link. Once you click edit, the article is instantly created and available for others to view.

Text Formatting

The text in your articles will be formatted automatically. Any text separated with two line breaks will be wrapped in paragraph tags. To add your own formatting, please see the pMCode Reference.

Adding Links

To create a link to an article you'll use double brackets, like this:

A mug of [[hot chocolate]] goes great with this sandwich.

Which would display this:

A mug of hot chocolate goes great with this sandwich.

When you click the hot chocolate link, the wiki discovers that the article doesn't exist and then gives you the opportunity to create it by clicking the edit link. If the hot chocolate article already existed then this method would automatically link to it.

You can do a lot more with Wiki Syntax, please see the Wiki Syntax section for details.

Edit an Article

To edit an article click on the edit link. This puts the article in "edit mode" which lets you edit the content right there on the web page. In Edit mode, simple text formatting such as bold, italics, and [u]underline[/u] are handled by pMcode, an easy-to-remember method of styling text. See the pMCode Reference. When you are done editing just click on update and your edits are instantly published.

Organizing Articles with Categories

Assigning an article to a category is easily accomplished with wiki syntax. For example, to assign an article a category called sandwiches you would click on the edit link to enter the article's edit mode and add the following anywhere in the article:

[[Category:Sandwiches]]

This would automatically assign the article to the Sandwiches category. If the category doesn't exist, the wiki will create it automatically. To add multiple categories just add an additional category like so:

[[Category:Sandwiches]]
[[Category:Peanut Butter]]

This would assign the article to the Sandwiches and Peanut Butter categories. And finally, you can add sub-categories. For example, let's say you want to create a "breakfast" sub-category for the main (also called "parent") Sandwiches category. The following would do that:

[[Category:Sandwiches::Breakfast]]

Now the article is assigned to the Sandwiches parent category and the Breakfast sub-category.

Please try to follow the layout of the current categories Special:Categories, and don't add a new one unless it's really necessary (ie, you expect more than one or two pages to be added to it).

You can do a lot more with Wiki Syntax, please see the Wiki Syntax section for details.