How to Use a Wiki

the basics
How to Use a Wiki | Membership | Edit Page | Links | Files and Images | Code | New Page | Advanced Wiki Features

Membership

You must have a Wikispaces membership in order to become a member of any wikis hosted by them. Membership is free and easy and they will not send you spam.

Once you have a Wikispaces membership you can join an individual wiki. You'll find a link in the navigation area of the wiki to "join this wiki". If you request membership, an organizer will quickly approve it and you can begin adding content to the wiki.

Edit Page

You'll find a button or link at the top of a page if it is open for editing. If it has a padlock icon, it has been locked by an organizer and cannot be edited by regular members.

The easiest way to edit wiki pages is with the visual editor. It looks a lot like Wordpad and other word processing applications. The toolbar has some buttons not found in Wordpad, but it also has the usual buttons for making text bold, italic, colored, etc.

To modify a page, click the "edit" button and it will open in the editing pane. You can remove text, alter it, or add new text in exactly the same way you would do it in Wordpad.

If you want to see the result of your modifications, click the "Preview" button on the toolbar. If you like what you see, click the "Save" button.

Links

You can easily add links to a page. Click the "Link" button in the editor's toolbar. A dialog will open that allows you to type the display text and specify the URL for the link. A link can be in this wiki, another wiki, or anywhere on the internet.

Files and Images

You can add links to files while in the editing pane as well. Click the "File" button on the toolbar. It allows you to select an existing file or to upload a new one. If you click on the filename, it will automatically be embedded in the text of your page. You can embed images this way as well. Images can be very helpful when illustrations are needed for tutorials.

Code

You can add Liberty BASIC code in such a way that the formatting and syntax-coloring are preserved. You can add code tags by clicking the "Widget" button on the toolbar and selecting "insert code." You can also simply type the tags. Your wikitext for code looks like this:

[[code format="lb"]]
for i = 1 to 10
next
[[code]]

The displayed text will look like this:

for i = 1 to 10
    print "Hello, Liberty BASIC!"
next

New Page

There are two easy ways to create a new page. The navigation area has a link for "New Page." Click it and type a name for your page. Keep page names short and avoid symbols and spaces because they will function as a URL. You can give your page a longer title in the text of the page.

You can also create a new page by creating a link on an existing page. When you click the link you'll open an editing pane that warns that the page doesn't yet exist and allows you to add content to the new page. A wikitext link looks like this:

[[New Page Title]]

It displays like this:
New Page Title

You can specify the link and the text to display it by typing the link URL, a pipes character, then the link text, like this:
[[PageLink|Title of Page]]

It displays like this:

Title of Page

Advanced Wiki Features

This short article takes you through the basics and this is all you need to know to make good use of a wiki. You can learn about the advanced techniques on the wiki help pages, the editing toolbar, or the "Manage Wiki" link in the navigation area of the wiki.

Have fun!

How to Use a Wiki | Membership | Edit Page | Links | Files and Images | Code | New Page | Advanced Wiki Features