Using the wiki
From NetMusician Wiki
Last updated: May 5, 2007
A wiki is, quite simply, a virtual whiteboard or chalkboard for sketching out ideas within groups, sharing these notes if desirable, and is often used for assembling documentation such as the content included within these pages. Some basic functionality is provided for formatting text and creating relatively complicated page layouts, and changes made to pages can be rolled back to previous states. To date, the most impressive example of the use of a wiki is the Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia hosting literally millions of pages of content in several different languages, and available to both consumers and content editors free of charge.
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Creating yourself a Wiki account
You will need a Wiki account to create and edit pages. You can create one for yourself via the "log in" link located at the upper right hand corner of any Wiki page.
Creating new pages
To create a new page, after logging in via the link at the upper right hand corner of any Wiki page, simply change the URL of the page to replace the title following the last slash (/) in the URL to a title for your new page. For instance, if you wanted to create a new page called "my page", and the page you were on was:
http://www.netmusician.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Simply change this URL to:
http://www.netmusician.org/wiki/index.php/My page
You should be directed to a blank page given your page title. To get started, simply click the edit tab.
Editing/Authoring a page
Within the edit tab, you'll notice a toolbar with several icons. Use these icons for special text formatting, link creation, embedding an image, and leaving your signature. You'll notice that doing so will insert code using special codes. This syntax is required to learn if you wish to apply these features, but the toolbar should hopefully assist in the learning curve so that you will not have to memorize cryptic codes and syntax.
If you hold your mouse over each icon in the toolbar, you'll find an explanation as to what function each button performs. The most useful of these include:
- bold text
- italic text
- internal link (for constructing links to other wiki pages)
- external link (for constructing links to other webpages outside of the wiki)
- level 2 headline (for constructing larger headlines within your page)
- your signature with timestamp (useful in working with others in indicating who has written what, and when)
You can make modifications to your text by highlighting your text and clicking the appropriate button provided within the toolbar. To save your page, simply click on the "save page" button
Other useful, miscellaneous features of this wiki
- history tab (for seeing past iterations of the page and seeing what content has changed)
- discussion (for page annotation and for providing notes)
