How_does_one_edit_a_page

It's very easy to edit a wiki page. Simply click on the "edit" link at the top or bottom of a wiki page. This will bring you to a page with a text box containing the text of that wiki page. Then type away, and press "Save" when finished!

Now, the rest of this page is a demonstration of various wiki techniques. After the first few sections, you will have to "teach yourself" by pressing the "edit" link (above and below) to see for yourself how various effects were achieved!

Usemod wiki experts: please add to this page as new features are activated/discovered. (There are varieties of wiki software. Wikipedia is a "Usemod" wiki, courtesy CliffordAdams.)

Make a new page

Two ways to make a new page:

Edit an old page and put <code> before the name of the new page, and

</code> after the name.  For example, you would type: <code>my page</code> .  Then save the old page and return to the <code>my page</code> link you created.  It will appear with a question mark after it, like this: <code>[my page]</code><u>?</u> .  Click on the question mark; that will open up the new page.  Replace "Describe the new page here." with whatever text you want to put on the page!


Type the name of the *old* page in the "address" line of your browser and hit return.

Good example of Recursion. Try it!!!----
For example, in the URL above, you would replace ----
<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/How_does_one_edit_a_page</code> with <code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Name_of_your_new_page</code> and then hit return.  Notice that *spaces* (what spaces?) in the title are converted into underscores ( _ ).  If you type spaces rather than underscores in your title, it won't work.  Be sure to make the first letter of your page upper case, or no one will be able to link to it!----
Say, someone want to run this item about underscores past me again.----

Naming pages

Here are some important notes about naming pages:

Generally, see naming conventions and Free Links.
Notice that in URLs spaces in the title are converted into underscores ( _ ).  If you type spaces rather than underscores in your title, it won't work.
On pages themselves, a page title can have a lowercase letter first, <code>like this</code>--but the link points to a page that has the first letter uppercase, <code>Like_this</code> .
You can still use the old page naming convention, which consists of mashing words together and capitalizing them, LikeThis.  (But, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should.  Stylistically, this wiki seems to be converging to a consensus that free links are nicer.)
Don't use single quotes in titles.  Sorry, but <code>Plato's Republic</code> won't work as a page name.

In sum, examine the following examples.
Good URLs:
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/My_new_page</code>
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wikiBacteria</code>
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wikiJimboWales</code>
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Platos_Republic</code>
Bad URLs:
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wikiMy new page</code>
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/my_new_page</code>
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/bacteria</code>
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/jimbowales</code>
:<code>http://www.wikipedia.com/wikiPlato's_Republic</code>
Good links:
:<code>my new page</code>
:<code>My new page</code>
:<code>JimboWales</code>
:<code>Platos Republic</code>
:<code>Plato's Republic</code>
Bad links:
:<code>my_new_page</code> (underscores not necessary)
:<code>My_new_page</code> (underscores not necessary)
:<code>jimbowales</code> (needs two capital letters)
:<code>Plato's Republic</code> (will not link to the page you want it to link to)
See naming conventions when choosing names for pages!

Demonstration area
*What follows is an area for demonstrating the various effects possible using Wikipedia, such as bold, italics, numbered lists, etc., etc.
*Click "edit" at the top or bottom of this page (i.e., the page you are now reading!) to see how these effects were achieved!!!
*If you don't click "edit" now you won't understand what's going on!!!

New paragraphs are made by simply pressing the "enter" or "return" key twice.  If you press it just once,
like this,
a new paragraph will not be made (as you can see).

Here is

the proper way

to make single-spaced lines.

:This line is indented.
::This line is indented even farther.
:::Who knows how far it can go?

This line is indented, but since I didn't use a colon ( : )
at the beginning of the line, it appears as a monospace font.
In other words, if you begin a paragraph with a space, that
line will be both indented and in a monospace font.
(Also, this line will not wrap!  It will simply increase the width of your window.)

This line is in italics.

And so is this one! (Using different code!)

And this! (Using still different code!  How versatile!)

This line is bold.

So is this one!

Here is an old style link: HomePage

Here is a new style link: Larry Sanger (see Free Links)

the text of this link is different from the name of the page it links to

it really doesn't MatterWhat youType in the...link description.  It's all linked!

An external link: http://www.nupedia.com/about.shtml

Another external link: Nupedia about page

If you type in the URL of a picture, it will be displayed rather than linked to:
http://www.wikipedia.com/wikia.gif

You don't have to create weird page titles, like Platos, just to make the plural or possessive form of a name.  You can write: Plato's.  In the old system you'd do it like this: JimboWales""'s homepage (using "").

Here is a numbered list:
Item 1
Item 2
Item 8
Notice, this line isn't numbered because it's not flush left.
:#Neither is this line

Here is a bulleted list:
*Here's an item

Here's another item

**We can do bullets within bullets, as it were



Pretty nifty, huh?




You can make a line on a page: ----
Or two, if you wish:



There are three ways to display, rather than parse, wiki code:
<code>you can use the <code> tag</code>
you can use the  tag
<nowiki>you can use the <nowiki> tag</nowiki>
The difference between <nowiki><code> and 
</nowiki> is that the pre tag preserves line breaks, while the code tag does not.  The nowiki tag...?  (We made liberal use of the <code><code></code> tag on this page.)

You can (and should!) create subpages: Talk

Sorry, but you cannot create subsubpages: TalkTalkAboutTalk

You can link to other subpages: Charlize Theron/Filmography or even charlize Theron/Filmography but please, not Charlize Theron/filmography .

We can do tables:
<table border=1>
<tr>
<td>Item one</td>
<td>Item two</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Item three</td>
<td>Item four</td>
</tr>
</table>

Fancy table:
<table border=1>
<tr>
<td>Item one</td>
<td>Item two</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan=2>Item three</td>
<td>Item four</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Item five</td>
</tr>
</table>

Here's another way to make a table:
||||||Heading||
||cell 1||cell2||cell 3||
||cell 1||||spanning 2 columns||

(We haven't implemented that way of doing tables, as you can see.)

A few special characters (see also Wiki ASCII codes page)
<table width=30% border=2>
<tr><td>129<td>ü</tr>
<tr><td>130<td>é</tr>
<tr><td>160<td>á</tr>
<tr><td>161<td>í</tr>
<tr><td>162<td>ó</tr>
<tr><td>163<td>ú</tr>
<tr><td>164<td>ñ</tr>
<tr><td>165<td>Ñ</tr>
</table>

You can make ^superscripts and _subscripts and you can control the font size and color!

*f(x) = a₀ + a₁x₁ + a₂x₂² + a₃x₃³ + ...

*f(x) = a₀ + a₁x₁ + a₂x₂² + a₃x₃³ + ...

If you want to redirect traffic going to one page to another page (with a better title, for example), then use the command <code>#REDIRECT pagename</code> at the top of the page.  See LarrysText for an example.  We are planning to automate the conversion of links from the old style, LikeThis, to the new style, like this.  In the meantime, you can use the <code>#REDIRECT pagename</code> function.

Practice editing pages in our SandBox!