From AFRESH

Contents 1 Wiki Quick Start: A Beginner’s Guide for Beginners 1.1 Get Started Now 1.1.1 Section Title 1.1.2 Plain Text 1.1.3 Subsections 1.1.4 Emphasis 1.1.5 Tables 1.1.6 Linking 1.2 Clean Up 2 Links

Wiki Quick Start: A Beginner’s Guide for Beginners

Welcome!

This guide is designed to help you get started with contributing to and editing the AFRESH wiki as quickly and painlessly as possible.

There are many help files scattered about, but the point of this is to get you editing RIGHT AWAY. The other help files can be sifted through when you are comfortable and know what you are looking for. Links for these are at the bottom.

Concerning this beginner's guide, the primary focus of a wiki is text, so this guide will start there. Additional functionality such as referencing and images can be found in the AFRESH Help Page.

There are a couple of ways to practice writing content without fouling pre-existing content. One is that Wikipedia has a Practice Sandbox for play and practice, but I created a blank page here for your convenience. Feel free to edit either as you see fit.

Get Started Now

Print this instruction page and then follow the above link (marked "blank page" in blue type), or simply ctrl-click (cmd-click for Macs) the link, and a new tab will be opened on the blank page (most browsers). Then, switch back and forth between the instructions tab and the practice area tab. You may need to hit the "Edit" tab at the top of the blank page to begin editing.

Section Title

First, title the section something like "My First Wiki." To do this, locate the text box below the fascinating blue buttons. In the text box, type the following:

=My First Wiki=

Then go to the bottom of the page and click on the button marked "Show preview."

Take a look and see how you've done. It will tell you that it is only a preview, and that changes have not yet been saved, but it is still nice to see that you've successfully edited a page. Now let's do some more.

Plain Text

Scroll down to the text box again and continue to edit. Adding plain text to the page you are editing is simple. Type a couple of sentences like the following:

This is my first time using a wiki.
This is the second paragraph.

• When using a wiki, remember that one RETURN does not break a paragraph. However, two RETURNs does.

This is my first time using a wiki.

This is the second paragraph.

• Typing the command <br/> will also allow you to break to a new paragraph.

This is my first time using a wiki.<br/>
This is the second paragraph.

In order to check your progress at any point, just go down and click on the "Show preview" button. If you want to save it, then hit the "Save page" button. Don't worry, you can re-edit later if you want. Just hit the "edit" tab at the top of the page.

Subsections

In order to add a subsection within your page, you must simply add an extra set of equal signs around the Subsection Title than you placed around the Section Title. By doing this, you should type something such as the following:

=My First Wiki=
This is my first time using a wiki.<br/>
This is the second paragraph.

==Subsection One==
This is the first subsection.

==Subsection Two==
This is the second subsection.

Click on the "Show preview" button to see how it comes out. Change the spacing and the number of returns between each subsection and line of text, keep looking at the preview and see how it changes each time. When you get to four sections or subsections, a table of contents like the one at the top of this page in blue is automatically created.

Emphasis

Within Subsection Two, practice adding different types of emphasis to your text. In order to emphasize your text, you can make it italic, bold, or italic and bold.
Practice this by typing the following in Subsection Two:

==Subsection Two==
This is the second subsection.

''Using 2 single quotes will make my text italic.''

'''Using 3 single quotes will make my text bold.'''

'''''Using 5 single quotes will make my text bold and italic.'''''

Now click on the "Show preview" button in order to see your progress.

Tables

We'll do two more things together in this guide. The other two most powerful things to get started is the creation of tables and internal and external links. Let's start by creating a two row, three column table. Then we'll populate the table with links and such.

Tables can get very complicated with formatting, but our goal here will be to go over the essentials only, and you can play with the formatting when you are more comfortable. First, let's create a new sub-subsection called "Table One." To do this go below your last text and type ===Table One===

Return, and type the following:

{| style="width:100%

The "{|" begins the table. The formatting text "style="width:100%" " indicates that the table width will occupy the entire width of the page and not be dependent on the amount of text within the cells. You could as easily use 30% or 75% or whatever was most convenient. Single RETURN, and use a vertical pipe "|", space, and type "One". Add another space and use a double vertical pipe "||". The double pipe separates the contents of one cell from those in the one next to it. Type "Two" and another double pipe and then "Three". Single RETURN and type a single vertical pipe followed by a dash "|-", then single RETURN again. Type another vertical pipe followed by a capital A, a double pipe, capital B, double pipe, and capital C. The text should look like "| A || B || C". RETURN and reverse the brackets used to open the table "|}", and that will close the table.

The text in the box should look like this:

{| style="width:100%"
| One || Two || Three
|-
| A || B || C
|}

And the table in the preview area should look like this when you click "Show preview":

One	Two	Three
A	B	C

• Note that you can bold or italicize each entry in the table just as with the plain text. But if you just want to make the whole first row a heading for each column, simply change the pipe "|" in front of the "One" to an exclamation point "!":

{| style="width:100%"
! One || Two || Three
|-
| A || B || C
|}

Click "Show preview" and the above table should look like this:

One	Two	Three
A	B	C

In order to center the letters under the numbers, find the pipe and dash "|-". After this type "align="center" " and preview it:

{| style="width:100%"
! One || Two || Three
|- align="center"
| A || B || C
|}

The table will now look like this:

One	Two	Three
A	B	C

For more information on using tables within a Wiki, please visit the Wikimedia Table Guide.

Linking

Although linking can easily be done in plain text, here we are going to add links inside the table we just created. The first thing we are going to do is to change the "A" in row 2 column 1 into an internal link to another part of this wiki. All internal links use double brackets at the beginning and ending. You will change the "A" in the table to the name of another page in the wiki. It is important that the name of the page be exact. You can link to a non-existent page, but this actually creates a new, empty page on this wiki. The exact name of the home page for this wiki is "Front Page". So change "A" in the table to [[Front Page]]. It should read like this:

{| style="width:100%"
! One || Two || Three
|- align="center"
| [[Front Page]] || B || C
|}

Now click Show preview, and the table should look like this:

One	Two	Three
Front Page	B	C

You will see under the heading "One" is "Front Page" in blue. This means that it is an active link. If you mistyped it, the link is red indicating an empty link.

Links that are added to this wiki can also be renamed as a way to better describe the page being linked to. This is accomplished by changing the "B" in row 2 column 2 to the following:

[[Front Page | Homepage]]

Once you have done this, the table should read like this:

{| style="width:100%"
! One || Two || Three
|- align="center"
| [[Front Page]] || [[Front Page | Homepage]] || C
|}

Click "Show preview". The table should now look like this:

One	Two	Three
Front Page	Homepage	C

External links (pages not on the AFRESH Wiki) are surrounded by single brackets. It is important that external links contain the full and complete web address such as "http://www.nsfafresh.org". Change the "C" in row 2 column 3 into and external link to AFRESH by typing [http://www.nsfafresh.org NSF AFRESH]. The table should now read like the following:

{| style="width:100%"
! One || Two || Three
|- align="center"
| [[Front Page]] || [[Front Page | Homepage]] || [http://www.nsfafresh.org NSF AFRESH]
|}

Once you click "Show Preview", the table should look like this:

One	Two	Three
Front Page	Homepage	NSF AFRESH

Clean Up

Feel free to play all you like, but please clean up before you go. To do this, simply delete everything in the text box while editing and hit "Save page". Thank you very much for putting in your time on this tutorial. There are many more guides detailing some of the more advanced features and their use. Please see the "Links" section below for more information.

Links

The following links are from wikipedia and wikimedia:

• Wikipedia Cheatsheet
• Wikimedia Reference Card
• Wikimedia User's Guide

The following are links to some of the help pages on the AFRESH wiki. Each of these links contain additional important information as well as links to other helpful pages concerning how to edit and contribute to AFRESH:

• Local Help
• How to Contribute
• Math Quick Start Guide

back to Homepage

Useful Links
AFRESH Help Page	Report Broken Links	User Feedback and Comments
An in-depth guide to getting started with and editing the AFRESH wiki. Also available within this page are links for more advanced editing procedures as well as links for what types of contributions can be made to AFRESH.	Any technical issues regarding inaccessible links or other malfunctions should be reported here so they may be corrected promptly.	Any positive and/or negative thoughts regarding any aspect of the AFRESH wiki are encouraged here.