Help:Contents

Add solutions as you find them. The Wiki Fire is a community learning experience. If you post what you learn, others can build on that knowledge. Some day, this page should be able to answer nearly any question about Wiki functionality. For formatting help, here is the Cheat Page from Wikipedia. I don't know if it all applies to these pages, but most of it should. You can also download this one-page Wiki Reference Card (PDF) and print it out. Keep it by your computer.

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Creating a page

Search The Wiki Fire for an article. If that article does not exist, the site will ask you if you would like to create it. Do it! The more people use this Web site, the more usefulit will become.

If you just have a couple of things to say, go ahead and write them as clearly as you can. If you have a lot to say, you might want to organize them into categories--check out the table of contents subheading.

Plurals

If you have a plural noun, like "First-years" or "Classes," the page for it should be under the singular of the noun, so: "First-year;" "Class." It wouldn't be a bad idea to have a redirect page at the plural though. (See below.)

Capitalization

THE WIKI FIRE AUTOMATICALLY CAPITALIZES THE FIRST LETTER OF ANY ARTICLE. AUTOMATICALLY. KNOW THIS.

If you're writing about a proper noun--a club, a building, a person, a department--please use title case for the aticle title. Lets say you're editing the article for CFA. You can make sure you're using the right case by looking at the URL of the page you're at. It should go something like this:

http://www.thewikifire.org/index.php?title=Ford_Center_for_the_Fine_Arts&action=edit

Note that most of the words are capitalized, but little words, like "for" and "the", aren't.

If you spot a problem, just change it and hit enter. The page will reload and you'll edit the properly capitalized page.

If you're dealing with something that people might have trouble capitalizing, or might be looking for under another title, check out the section on redirects.

If a page is already located under an incorrect capitalization (see "capitalization" under "creating pages"), skip on to the "move" section.

Editing a page

To edit an article, click the edit tab and start making changes and/or adding information. To help site editors and other interested users, add a brief description of your changes to the "Summary" bar directly above the "Save page" button.

Make sure you use the "Show preview" button to make sure your changes all worked before saving the page. This will help keep the page change history clean and easy to follow. However, if you make a mistake, no worries. Everybody has to learn somehow.

The Wiki Fire is your playground and a useful tool. Please experiment.

Creating a table of contents on a page

The table of contents will be automatically created once there are four or more sections on the page. A section is created by using the "=" character as follows:

1. == headline == will create a main section.
2. === subheadline == will create a subsection.
3. ==== sub-subheadline === will create a subsection within that subsection.

For an example, click edit on this page and see how the different sections were created.

Creating links

There are two kinds of links in The Wiki Fire, internal links and external links. A wiki depends on tagging as many internal links as possible, so this is important.

To create an internal link, put the word you would like to link in brackets as follows.
Type: [[The Wiki Fire]]
Get: The Wiki Fire

To create an external link, put the entire URL, including the http:// into one set of brackets. This style can also be used for citing sources.
Type: [http://www.bigmuddyrecords.org/ Big Muddy Records]
Get: Big Muddy Records

Type: There are five bands on this label.[http://www.bigmuddyrecords.org/]
Get: There are five bands on this label.[1]

There are also buttons above the editing window you can use if you forget how to link.

Creating a redirect page

Lets say you're working on the page for CFA. The official title of the page is Ford Center for the Fine Arts, but nobody's going to go looking for that. They're going to type in "CFA" and expect to find the page.

But we don't want two articles in two different places, do we. that would be a mess. This is what redirects were created for.

What you would do is edit the CFA page, and then type in

#REDIRECT[[Ford Center for the Fine Arts]]

and then save the page.

This also works for capitalizations. For example, some people might go looking for the "Ford Center For The Fine Arts". It would be good to have that page redirect to "Ford Center for the Fine Arts", too.

If a page is already located under an incorrect capitalization (see "capitalization" under "creating pages"), skip on to the "move" section.

Move Pages

Every published page has a "move" button. Use it with caution--only if a page really is in the wrong place. Maybe it has the wrong capitalization, maybe it's named "classes" when it should be named "class".

The moving process is really pretty self-explanatory: you just type in a new title for the page. The old page is replaced with a redirect to the new one. (handy!)

Creating a small table (meeting times)

This table is perfect for bits of information like meeting times, but will not really work for large chunks of text or images. If you find more uses, be sure to write them here.

Type:

<properties>

Day=Mondays

Time=8 p.m.

Place=[[The Human Rights Center]]

</properties>

Get:

<properties> Day=Mondays Time=8 p.m. Place=The Human Rights Center </properties>

Creating a larger table

For more complex information, use this table. A number of examples can be found on the List of Current and Former Student Senators page.

Type:

{|

| '''Radio Show''' || '''Genre''' || '''Day''' || '''Time'''

|-

| Bill's Beatles Bonanza || The Beatles || Thursday ||4-5 PM

|-

| Prairie Fire Companion || Variety/Talk || Monday || 10-11 PM

|-

| Super Mario Happy Fun Hour || Video game music || Friday || 8-9 AM

|-

| Extremist's Angst Forum || Political Talk || Sunday || 1-2 PM

|-

| Mornington Crescent || Game show/indie || Tuesday || 3-4 AM

|}

Get:

Radio Show	Genre	Day	Time
Bill's Beatles Bonanza	The Beatles	Thursday	4-5 PM
Prairie Fire Companion	Variety/Talk	Monday	10-11 PM
Super Mario Happy Fun Hour	Video game music	Friday	8-9 AM
Extremist's Angst Forum	Political Talk	Sunday	1-2 PM
Mornington Crescent	Game show/indie	Tuesday	3-4 AM

References

You can add references to a story Wikipedia (similar to the style seen on the Hamblin Hall page) style with the <references/> command. Here's an example:

Type:

... and it cost $5 million<ref>[http://www.register-mail.com/stories/041207/LOC_BCTK6D4K.GID.shtml The Register-Mail] the daily newspaper of Galesburg, IL</ref>

== References ==

<references/>

and you get:

... and it cost $5 million

Uploading/using images

Images are great additions to Wiki Fire pages. They add interesting visual information to pages and are encouraged for people to use. If you would like to use an image you must first upload it on the upload file page. Simply press the choose file button and select the file you would like to upload to Wiki Fire. Wiki Fire uses the same file name as the image, so if you want to change it you can do so in the Destination: Filename section. Keep in mind that there may be more than one file with the same name. If that is the case, you will have to choose another name before you can upload the file, In the summary section, please write where you got the image and especially it's copyright status.

Most images taken from Web sites are copyrighted and therefore should not be used. If an image is without a copyright explanation can and will be deleted by the Web site administrators. Images created by yourself can be used. Please note if you want the use of your image to be only on Wiki Fire. Preferably, you would release it as a Creative Commons image and let people use the image in any capacity they choose. Just let readers know via the summary what you want to do.

After the image is uploaded, you will be taken to an image page, which is basically the location of the image on Wiki Fire (it's the same name you gave the file when you uploaded it). To use it on a Wiki Fire page you will need to go to edit and write [[Image:{name}}]] on the site, which will link to the image page. Where you put the link will determine the location of the picture on the page. You can also manipulate the look and location of the image through a couple of additions to the image link, including changes to the size(by increasing the pixel count of the image), location (right/left/or centered on the page), making the image a thumbnail of a larger image, and the additions of captions(which can contain links to other pages, citations or other info). To do this you simply add the | symbol after the image link. The order in which you do this does not matter, as long as the image link comes first. Ex. [[Image:{name}|{type}|{location}|{size}|{caption}]] For an actual picture of how this looks, here is a visual example:

A sketch of the Lincoln-Douglas debates at Knox College

You can use the same process to upload other types of files such as sound of music (which should be only for appropriate pages). Get started!

Fun features

Google Maps usage

Click on the "make a map" link on any edit page and use the interface to find the spot you want. The page will load with the map preset to that location.

YouTube integration

You can embed any video on YouTube into this wiki. Here's how you do it.

1. Find a video on YouTube and copy down its YouTube ID. This can be found in the address bar. and looks something like ii8wMv3k1XQ.
2. Go to the spot on the page you would like to add the embedded video to and type "<youtube v="ii8wMv3k1XQ" />", replacing the ii8wMv3k1XQ with the YouTube ID you found.

For an example in working, visit the Galesburg Backyard Wrestling page. Click edit if you would like to see how the video was placed.