Rick's Super-Quick Getting Started Guide
Contents
If you haven't yet, take a look at this annotated screenshot which explains what all the links and toolbars mean and do.
Your Account
Congratulations! If you're reading this page, you've successfully logged in! Our wiki authenticates using your Windows login ID, and automatically creates a wiki account on this system. Your wiki ID is used to track any changes you've made to any web pages.
Click into your UserPreferences and enter your email address. This allows you to take advantage of a neat feature of 'subscribing' to pages. When you subscribe to a page, you will automatically be notified via email anytime someone else makes an update to your page. This is especially good for discussion pages.
Making a new page or link
To make a new page, simply edit a page you would like it linked from (presumably your department page) and add a link using one of the below techniques:
Use wiki /CamelCase - Any new word with mixed capital letters is automatically interpreted as a possible new link.
If you have a mixed case word you don't want linked, add an exclamation point to the front of the word. Example, !CognitiveArtsUse ["/brackets and double quotes"] - For example, ["/Rick's Testing Area"] would become Rick's Testing Area.
- Please try to remember to precede the link with a forward slash. This helps keep the page a sub-page (below) the page you linked it from.
- Click 'Save Changes'. Now, you will see a new link on your page, simply click that link and you will be prompted to edit a new page!
Working with Attachments & Images
The concept to keep in mind when working with attachments is; just like a regular web page, you need to have attachment available from that server. Then, you need to provide a link to that attachment.
Since you don't have local access to the server, the "attachments" link is really nothing more than an upload tool. It doesn't automatically provide the necessary download link for your readers. See the sections below for displaying your links.
It also helps to keep the following tips in mind when working with attachments on the web (and of course the same applies to this wiki):
No spaces! Web browsers hate spaces! Otherwise, your document This is a sample document.doc becomes This%20is%20a%20sample%20document.doc. I suggest replacing spaces with hyphens.
Include the extension for the file type, as this is how the wiki-parser determines how to handle the attachment. i.e. use .doc for Word, .xls for Excel, .jpg for an image, etc) (for example, project-budget.xls)).
- While you can make the link label anything you want, I generally advise making the link label the same as the document name. This way, when the reader downloads a document, it takes the guesswork out of finding the doc. For example:
BAD: Click to download this important document and fill out the form.
GOOD: Download and complete this form: This-is-a-sample-document.doc
How to add a picture
These steps assume you're in GUI-edit mode (you should see a word processing-style toolbar above the edit window):
First create the link on your page:
click the
icon in the toolbar. This will pop a dialog window asking for a filename. Leave the pop-up list as "attachment:", and type in the name you want the filename to be (remember: no spaces, include the .jpg or .gif extension (for example, example-screenshot.jpg)). Don't worry, you can make up any name, because whatever you upload will be automatically renamed to this.
Click "Save Changes" to get back into normal page view.
Upload the image to the server:
You'll notice at the spot you put the picture link, it will now read upload new attachment "example-screenshot.jpg".
- Simply click this link, you'll be taken to a new screen prompting you to upload your image. Click the 'Browse' button to find your image, and click upload.
Click the "Clear message" link at the top to be taken back to your page. Voila! You should see your image!
(for you text-only wiki jockey's: substitute attachment:your-filename.jpg for step 1.)
Making downloadable file attachments (Word, PowerPoint, etc.)
First create the link on your page:
click the
icon in the toolbar. This will pop a dialog window asking for a filename. Leave the pop-up list as "attachment:", and type in the name you want the filename to be (remember: no spaces, include the file-type extension (for example, example-budget.xls)). Don't worry, you can make up any name, because whatever you upload will be automatically renamed to this.
Click "Save Changes" to get back into normal page view.
Upload the document to the server:
You'll notice at the spot you put the document link, it will now read upload new attachment "project-budget.xls
- Simply click this link, you'll be taken to a new screen prompting you to upload your image. Click the 'Browse' button to find your document, and click upload.
Click the "Clear message" link at the top to be taken back to your page. Voila! You should see a link to your attachment!
Importing text from Word Docs, Emails, etc
Do NOT try to paste in text from a Word doc or email in GUI-mode! I can almost guarantee that you will get an error when you try to save.
The reason is because the wiki engine parser will choke on all those invisible control-tags (for example, the tags that makes text italic) that the parser doesn't understand. Even when you think you have a plain text, there's lots of invisible markers specifying font size, font face, etc.
To successfully import text:
- Click the 'Text mode' button to get into wiki's text mode.
- Paste in your text.
- Click 'Save Changes' to create a first-save and beginning revision.
- Click 'Edit' again, and begin reformatting your text just as you would in a normal word processor.
Editing: GUI verses Text modes
Creating or editing pages in GUI mode, extremely intuitive. Word processing-style toolbars help you style your text, make links, bulleted lists, and attachments.
However, the GUI editor is not always as robust as we would hope, and eventually you may run into weird anomalies that can be frustrating. For example, after an import of a long document (see above), you may notice that the GUI editor may try to start reformatting your numbered lists to bulleted lists.
Fortunately, there is an easy fix, and it's not as scary as it may sound: Text mode.
About Tables
Tables are a nice way to organize and display data in a cell-form. However, please note that tables in wiki's have to be greatly simplified, otherwise they will break. In general:
- Keep the text in your table cells simple.
- Do not try to insert multiple paragraphs within the same table cell.
- Do not try to use bullet points within table cells.
The reason for these limitations is because wiki lingo takes what's normally fairly complex markup and replaces it with a greatly simplified coding mock-up. To illustrate, to make a list on a regular web page, you would have to do something like this:
<ul> <li> this is item one. </li> <li> this is item two. </li> </ul>
However, in wiki code, the same thing is accomplished by simply doing:
* this is item one. * this is item two.
The result is that of that over-simplification is that it is not able to handle complex interactions that you may be used to seeing on normal web sites (such as lists embedded in table cells).
How to embed Flash & Other Multimedia
Our wiki is fairly sophisticated in that it is capable of handling flash and other multimedia content (many other wiki's cannot). But, if you're working with this medium, I presume that you already know most of what needs to be done (see examples above for uploading files). Hopefully, the example code below will be self-explanatory:
[[EmbedObject(example.swf)]] [[EmbedObject(example.swf,width=637,height=392)]] [[EmbedObject(SlideShow/example.swf,width=637,height=392)]] [[EmbedObject(SlideShow/example.swf,width=637,height=392,play=false)]] [[EmbedObject(SlideShow/example.swf,width=637,height=392,play=false,loop=false)]] [[EmbedObject(SlideShow/example.swf,width=637,height=392,play=false,quality=low)]]
Additional help is here: http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/MacroMarket/EmbedObject
I have been able to embed flash by following these instructions, thanks very much. I followed the additional help link above, saw the ability to get menu buttons, followed that link but got lost. The German instructions seem more complete but I don't know any German. Can you help with this at all. Thanks in advance.
- If you don't like my help and documentation, you are more than welcome to browse the built-in help files (which is always available in the tab along the top). The above is really a FAQ and quick start guide, the wiki help files will have much more detail on what you can do.