Help:Crash Course

Editing a wiki is easy! To begin, start writing content and save it when you're done. Once you're comfortable, read the page below for info on formatting, to gradually learn about the advanced features that you can use on Appropedia.

If you run into any questions that this guide cannot solve, you can always start a topic to ask the community for help.

Formatting pages

There are two main methods used to edit pages: (1) the visual editor and (2) the source editor. For new users, especially for those without previous experience in using markup, the visual editor will be the most straightforward and simplest option. However, knowing how to use both will help you edit better pages as you start working with other features of the site such as templates.

Visual editor

Visual editor controls.

The visual editor is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) tool to edit pages on MediaWiki. To use it you simply need to click on the Edit tab, which will change the view and allow you to change text styles, formatting, add citations, tables and symbols, among other things. Apart from the regular text formatting (bold, italics), some useful things to add to an article are the following:

Template:Grid

There are some keys you need to rely on within the visual text editor

The first of these is the paragraph. If you click on “Heading”, a drop-down menu will open and you’ll be able to manage the titles within your text in a simple and intuitive way.
Above paragraph, you will find the options that allow you to choose between bold, italics, and many other settings.
Scrolling through the toolbar, you will find other fundamental options. The first tool on which we invite you to focus is that of links, recognizable by the classic icon in the shape of a paper clip. By clicking on it, you can create two types of links: on the left side, you will have the chance to link to another Appropedia entry, while on the right you will have the possibility to link it to an external address.
Among other keys, pay attention to the list tool, which allows you to make bulleted or numbered lists, insert images, tables or others, and the one with special characters, with which you can insert characters in the text that are not present in your keyboard.

Source editor

MediaWiki sites (such as Wikipedia, Wikia, or Appropedia) use wikitext to format its pages. The source editor can be activated at the top menu of every page, by pressing 'Edit source'.

File:02-source-code.png

The source editor will allow you to either type the symbols for wikitext or by selecting the text and using the formatting bar above the edit box — selecting B to format it as bold, for example. To see what a button does, hover your mouse over each button to get you acquainted with each option. As you get used to wikitext, you'll find yourself formatting the text directly.

Wikitext (or wiki markup) consists of normal characters like asterisks, single quotes or equation marks which have a special function in the wiki, sometimes depending on their position. For example, to format a word in italic, you include it in two single quotes, for example, by typing text ''like this''.

Wikitext cheatsheet

These are just some of the possible ways to format text using wikitext. Use this section as a useful reference as you edit more pages on Appropedia.

These work anywhere on a page

Description

You type

You get

Italics

''italic''

italic

Bold

'''bold'''

bold

Bold and italic

'''''bold & italic'''''

bold & italic

Big

<big>BIG</big>

BIG

Small

<small>small</small>

small

Colored text (list.)

<font color="DarkOrchid">colored text</font>

colored text

Escape wiki markup

text with no ''markup''

no ''markup''

Signature (use to sign your comments)

~~~~

User:Lonny (talk) 22:21, April 30 2024 (UTC)

These work at the beginning of the line only

Description

You type

You get

Headings (Heading 1 is used only automatically for the page title)

==Heading 2==
 ===Heading 3===
 ====Heading 4====
 =====Heading 5=====

Heading 2

Heading 3
Heading 4
Heading 5

Horizontal line (use sparingly)

----

Bullet list

*one 
*two 
*three

one
two
three

Numbered list

#one 
#two 
#three

one
two
three

Definition list

;Definition 
:item 1 
:item 2

Definition: item 1; item 2

Preformatted text

 a space at the 
 beginning of the line 
 creates 
 preformatted text

a space at the 
beginning of the line 
creates 
preformatted text

Tables. See Help:Tables and Help:Table examples for more details.

{| border="1" style="color:Crimson;
|-
| This
| Is
|-
| A
| Table
|}

This	Is
A	Table

Internal links (wikilinks)

Here are some variations of two important types of links in Appropedia: internal links to other pages in the wiki — including files (such as pictures) and external links to other websites. To add an internal link, enclose the name of the page you want to link to in double square brackets. When you save the page, you'll see the new link pointing to your page. If the page already exists, it will be displayed in blue, while empty pages are displayed in red.

As you click on an internal link, the first letter is automatically capitalized and spaces are turned into underscores (typing an underscore in the link has the same effect as typing a space, but is not recommended). Always make sure to follow proper naming for all pages, since links are case sensitive and might direct you to a missing page due to a different capitalization.

Description	You type	You get
Internal link	`[[Appropriate technology]]`	Appropriate technology
Piped link	`[[Appropriate_technology\|a page about appropriate tech]]`	same link with a different text

External links

External links are in the form [http://www.example.org link name] (resulting in link name), with the link name separated from the URL by a space. Links without link names will be numbered: [http://www.example.org] is simply a number [1]. Links with no square brackets will be displayed in their entirety: http://www.example.org.

Description	You type	You get
External link	`http://mediawiki.org`	http://mediawiki.org
External link, different title	`[http://mediawiki.org MediaWiki]`	MediaWiki
External link, unnamed	`[http://mediawiki.org]`	[2]
Interwiki link for Wikipedia and other wikis	`[[Wikipedia:Sanitation]]` `[[Greenlivingpedia:Green computing]]`	Wikipedia:Sanitation Greenlivingpedia:Green computing
Superscript for Wikipedia links	`{{w\|target pagename}}`. `Lira{{w\|Lira, Uganda}}`	Lira^W

Inline HTML and CSS

Some HTML tags (and inline CSS as well) are allowed in Appropedia, for example <code>, <div>, <span> and <font>. If you know enough HTML, this will come in handy as you edit pages. We encourage you, however, to stick with wikitext as much as possible to preserve content integrity over time and to make it as portable as possible.

Attaching files

Appropedia encourages using supporting media to make content more informative, especially media that supports multilingual learning. A great variety of file types are allowed on Appropedia: documents, presentations, videos, vector images, audio, and photographs, for example. Here are some instructions and guidelines on including media on your page.

Uploading

Before uploading, please ensure that the content is owned by you or have legal rights to upload and redistribute it in a way that grants the same rights to the community. Appropedia uses the CC BY-SA license as a default but welcomes content with other copyleft licenses such as GNU GPL (see Appropedia:Copyrights for more information on our approach to licensing).

Here is what you need to know about uploading files: Make sure to locate the file on your computer that you will upload.; We strongly recommend using open, editable file formats

For photos: Reduce photo sizes to less than 4MB to help us save disk space.; The preferred formats are JPEG for photographs and PNG for technical drawings.; Also, make sure to rotate the images to the proper orientation.

To upload any file

File:Tool menu.png

The tool menu where the file upload option is located.

Click on the Special:Upload link located at the toolbox menu.

Click the "Browse..." button on the "Upload file" page, and select the file on your computer.

Select the destination name of your file. Ensure that the filename is original (if not, add the date to the start of the filename).

Enter a summary (this step is optional but will be useful for others who view the file in the future).

The summary section is a great place to indicate how you obtained the file (if you created it or attribute the original author).

To finish the upload, press the "Upload file" button. You will have to wait, depending on your Internet connection.

Once your file is uploaded, you will probably want to put it on your page. This is done by adding [[File:Filename]] to the text.

Please note that others may edit your uploads (and admins may delete them) if necessary. Also, any attempts to abuse the system may get you blocked from uploading.

Embedding content

If you have uploaded videos or documents to other platforms such as YouTube or Google Docs, you can get an embed code that will show on Appropedia pages. We don't have a strict policy that encourages or admonishes using embed codes, so you are free to consider whether to do so by considering the following possibilities.

Things to consider before embedding files: External sites sometimes break or become unavailable over the years. Once a site goes down or accounts are closed, content is usually lost for good.; Many sites do not allow users to download the content; this might become increasingly difficult due to legal restrictions around web scraping.; External hosting is useful for files too large to be stored on Appropedia (e.g., using YouTube or Vimeo to store videos).; Sometimes it is possible to reduce the file size by switching formats. Consider using text-based

Before embedding files from an external source, consider using text-based formats that allow porting into other formats. Markdown is a very powerful, yet portable alternative that you should consider. Here are some examples:

Documentation
- R Markdown Books use the R flavor of Markdown to generate technical publications.
- Jupyter Notebooks is a text-based tool that generates digital notebooks for reproducible research.
- LaTeX
Presentations
Format translation: Pandoc

Finally, consider uploading your content to archive repositories such as The Internet Archive to ensure that your project lives on over the years.

Avoid huge image files

Huge image files should be avoided, as they can make pages load slowly. This is an accessibility issue to consider especially for remote or underdeveloped areas. Usually, the file should be compressed to 4 MB or less, even for a very large or detailed picture. Photos from digital cameras can be bigger than 5 MB, which is often unnecessarily large.

An image editing tool can help you resize it. An excellent open-source program to open and edit files is ImageMakick. Another good image viewer (for Windows) is IrfanView. To give you an idea, a fairly large image (1920x1080, Compressed JPG 100% 24bit/pixel) may still weigh around 500 kb.

To learn more about file types and file size calculation, please reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_file_formats

Images

Main article: Help:Images

This section describes the image markup language, i.e. the set of "markers" (rules or conventions, coded expressions) to add images, illustrations, and graphics to Appropedia pages. After having uploaded an image (of your creation or an open-source license image), you can insert it by referencing the filename as an internal link, for example:

[[Image:File.png | thumb | caption]]

For instance, if you just uploaded a file named AEFprevfilt2.jpg, you can insert it by typing [[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg where is the image filename, thumb is a parameter for the default formatting of the image, and caption is the short text that describes its content. The following table will describe some of the options that you may use to format your images.

Description	You type	You get
Image only	`[[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg]]`	File:AEFprevfilt2.jpg
Thumbnailed image	`[[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg\|thumb]]`	File:AEFprevfilt2.jpg
Captioned thumbnail	`[[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg\|thumb\|Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter]]`	File:AEFprevfilt2.jpg Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter
Captioned thumbnail with center alignment	`[[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg\|thumb\|center\|Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter]]`	File:AEFprevfilt2.jpg Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter

See also Help:Add image tutorial, and a much more detailed page at wikipedia:Wikipedia:Picture tutorial, with many options.

Galleries

Main article: Help:Images#Galleries

Image galleries are a great way to organize images on a grid. These are mostly on Appropedia to outline instructions or to showcase a list of projects. To include a gallery, you simply need to wrap your image insertions with the <gallery></gallery> tags. For example:

<gallery mode=nolines widths=200>
Image:image_name01|caption01
Image:image_name02|caption02
</gallery>

Video

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Other editing tools

Page history

Every page allows you to view the history of edits. This allows you to undo any changes that you have done to a page, and even to revert the page back in time to a previous version.

Diffs

Diffs are pages that show the differences between page revisions in a wiki page. A diff page shows two columns with the text removed on the left and text added on the right and the more recent revision of the page displayed below the columns. To view a diff, go to the History tab, select two revisions and click "Compare selected revisions".