Getting Started with the Docs

Revision as of 00:09, 24 August 2011

Hey everybody,

Welcome to the docs! This is a living document so please make changes as we go to improve our process and make this better.

Creating your User Page

If this is the first page you have visisted and you have not created a user page yet -- do it now!

To create your User Page after registering, click your User Name link at the very top of the Codex screen. [Until you put some content onto that page, the link will be red indicating a wiki page that doesn't yet exist.]

What should you do with this page?

• Learn Wiki markup
• Write something about yourself
• Post pictures of puppies
• Anything you want, its yours

Creating a Page

Okay. Lets go over some quick guidelines to creating new articles. These are going to help us with work flows so we can keep track of what is new, what is ready to be edited and what is complete.

How-to Create a New Page

Simple but not intuitive in MediaWiki. There are several ways to create a new article.

Method 1

1. Type the name of the article you want to create in the search field and search for it. Say we are using Penguins as the example.
2. Guess what? It does not exist -- but right under the search bar is "Create the page "Penguins" on this wiki!"
3. Click it and you have a new blank page.
4. Add some content and save to create your page.

Method 2

1. From any existing page just add a link to the page you want to create.
2. Add links by wrapping the page name in [[]]. Ex. [[Penguins]]
3. Save the page you are on and a red link will be created to the new page.
4. Goto the new page, add some content and save to create your page.

New Page Requirements

There are few setup steps when creating a new page.

1. Mark it as a new page [[Category:New Page]] to the bottom of your page.
   1. This will mean they have been created but are not ready to be edited until the original author feels they are finished.

This is the only thing that I can think of right now but lets add to this as we find more things that will help us get organized.

Editing a Page

As your page develops you might want some help from everyone else to add to it or edit your content.

If you don't want your writing read, scrutinized, edited, slashed or deleted -- write on your personal blog, we wont touch it.

To mark your page as open for editing add a draft category link to the bottom of your page.

1. Use [[Category:Draft]]
2. Also add additional category links to describe the categories you feel are appropriate for the page. A list of current categories can be found under Special:Categories or using the Categories link at the bottom of the page.
3. Do not remove the [[Category:New Page]] link it will help with overall structure later on.

Avoid deleting entire articles without first asking the author.
If the article does not describe the title or is poorly written, communicate this with the author. This helps us all improve.

Completing Pages

Once the author feels their page has been completed they may mark it as complete. Do this by

1. Adding a [[Category:Complete]] link to the bottom of the page.

Completed pages will be reviewed by an admin and either sent back to the author or added into the Docs structure.