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Algeria: Getting Started

A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily... The term wiki is a shortened form of 'wiki wiki' which is from the native language of Hawaii (Hawaiian), where it is commonly used as an adjective to denote something 'quick' or 'fast' (Hawaiian dictionary)" (Wikipedia).

For example, a "cookbook wiki" would be a website where you could easily add your own recipes, edit existing recipes, and help organize the recipes using categories. You'd do all of this with simple markup called wiki syntax (we'll get to that shortly). Together you and the community would maintain this online recipe collection to help bring more deliciousness to everyone's meals.

Edit, Create, Organize

Editing existing articles (content), creating new articles, and organizing articles into categories are the three main tasks you'll do on any wiki website.

Edit an Article

Provided you are a registered member at MissionEquip and that you are logged in to your account, you can edit an article by clicking on the edit link near the upper right hand corner of the main part of the screen (between the "View" and "History" links). 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 underline are handled by pMCode, an easy-to-remember method of styling text (more on pMCode in a moment). When you are done editing just click on update and your edits are instantly published.

pMCode Basics

pMCode works by surrounding the text you want to style with a bracketed tag. For example, if you want to bold some text you'd do this:



Which would display like this after editing:

This text is not bold. This text is bold.

Adding italic and underline work the same way. For example, this:



Would display like this after editing:

This text is italicized. This text is underlined.

You can do a lot more with pMCode. Just see the pMCode Reference section below for details.

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. Sound strange? Let's go back to the Cookbook wiki example to explain.

A set of breakfast recipes is not complete without an inspired Peanut Butter Sandwich. You have such a recipe. To add this recipe, the first thing you would do is use the Create/Find Page search tool in the sidebar to see if someone already added a recipe with the same title. You search for Peanut Butter Sandwich. The wiki checks all existing articles and comes up empty. The wiki then gives you the opportunity to create an article titled Peanut Butter Sandwich by clicking the Edit link. Once you click edit, the article is instantly created and you can share your gooey peanut butter masterpiece with the world.

While editing your Peanut Butter Sandwich recipe you remember that nothing goes with such a delicacy better than a mug of your special hot chocolate. The easiest way to create an article for your hot chocolate recipe is to create a link for it using wiki syntax, a markup very similar to pMCode. But instead of using a single bracket, you'll use double brackets. To create a link for your hot chocolate recipe you'd do something like this:



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 below for details.

Organizing Articles with Categories

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



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:



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:



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

You can do a lot more with Wiki Syntax. Please see the Wiki Syntax section below for details.

pMcode Reference

This wiki supports the use of "pMcode" within articles. pMcode is a sort of simple syntax that you can use to format articles with bold text, links, and more. It is very similar (in many cases identical) to the codes used on many popular forum packages.

URLs and Linking





You can easily create links with custom text or simply with the URL itself as the link.

Email Links





As with URLs, you can also format email addresses. These pMcode tags will automatically encode the email address to make it more difficult for "spam bots" to retrieve it.

Images



You can easily display an image.

Apply CSS Classes



You may apply a CSS class to a piece of content. This code will produce HTML like this: <samp><span class="class_name">your content</span></samp>.

Font Sizes And Colors



You can specify font sizes as 1 through 6. 1 is the smallest and 6 is the largest.



You may also specify a color for the text. Further, these pMcodes can be nested.



Bold, Strong, Em And Italic









Bold, strong, em and italic text is simple to add.

Strike Text



This produces text with a line through the center of it. Note that the output of this tag is not valid in XHTML 1.0 Strict documents.

Quoting



You can surround text written by someone else which you'd like to "quote". These tags will be replaced with <samp><blockquote></samp> HTML tags.

Pre-Formatted Text





You can submit pre-formatted text such as script examples. These will be replaced with <samp><pre> </pre></samp> HTML tags. Whitespace and line wrapping will be preserved as you input it. Note that very long lines will not automatically be wrapped and thus these could affect your site layout.

Wiki Syntax

Wiki users create new pages, categories, links, and perform other actions directly on the wiki using special syntax. Wikis traditionally use double brackets for this syntax and the ExpressionEngine Wiki Module does the same.

Create or Link to a Page



This creates a link to a wiki page with the specified title. If the page does not exist, you can create it when you click the link.

For example, if you are writing an article on sandwiches and want to link to or create a page specifically about peanut butter sandwiches you could use the following syntax:



This would link to a page title "Peanut Butter Sandwiches" or it would allow you to create that page when the link is clicked.

Create Single Category



Placing this syntax in a article assigns it to the specified category. If the category does not exist, the category will be created.

For example, to assign an article about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to a "Sandwiches" category you would use this syntax:



That will automatically assign the article to the Sandwiches category or create it if it does not exist. It will also automatically create a link that displays all articles in the "Sandwiches" category.

Create Nested Category



Placing this syntax in a article assigns it to the specified categories. If one or both of the categories does not exist, they will be created.

For example, to assign an article about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to a "Sandwiches" category with a "Peanut Butter" subcategory you would use this syntax:



That will automatically assign the article to the "Sandwiches" parent category and a "Peanut Butter" subcategory. If either category does not exist it will be created.

Link to a Category Page



This will create a link to the category page (notice colon at the beginning) that will display all the articles in the specified categories. This does not create category.

Linking to Image or Uploaded File

NOTE: The wiki can automatically give you a file or image's code. On the article Edit page click on View 10 Most Recent File Uploads. If you need an older file click on Uploaded Files in the navigation and then select file. You'll see the appropriate code to use to call that file or image.



Creates a link to a file page for an uploaded file.



This creates an <img> tag for an uploaded image.