Basic usage information

• Click the [Edit this page] button. You do not need to be logged in to edit any page.
• Make any changes that would improve the page.
• Click [Preview] at any time (and scroll down) to see your work.
• Put a brief remark in the Edit summary box at the bottom of the page to describe what you did.
• Click [Save] to save your changes

• Text will be “wrapped” into paragraphs automatically.
• Force a new paragraph by leaving a blank line in the text.
• Use the button above the editor that has a red check and “abc” on it (it looks like this:) to run a spelling check on your text.
• Use the buttonbar at the top of the editor to format text, add headings, and make lists. Each button inserts simple markup that will cause the formatting to occur. You can also type in the formatting directly:
  • Character formatting: **bold** _ _ underlined _ _ ' ' monospaced ' ' ^{^superscript} _{_subscript} <del>deleted</del>
  • Heading levels 1 through 5 (most through least important) are marked by surrounding text in dashes, six dashes for level 1 through two dashes for level 5.
  • Lists (like this one) are made by typing two spaces, then a ‘*’. Nest lists by typing two more spaces and ‘*’. For example:

  * List item one
  * List item two
    * nested under item two

• When you want to put a link on a page, enclose the name of the page to which you wish to link in double square brackets: [[wiki:usageintro]] will create a link to this page like this: Basic usage information.

• To link to a web site, just type in the URL for the site: http://collections.nhm.org, for example.

• We use namespaces to keep groups of pages organized. Think of namespaces as folders or directories.
• In a page name, the namespace is created by a colon in the name. This page’s full name is wiki:usageintro and it is in the wiki namespace.
• Before you create a new page, browse this wiki to see if it “belongs” in an existing namespace, or if you should create a new one. Creating a new page (see below) automatically creates a new namespace if necessary. 1)
• Namespaces can be nested: people:students:USC would be fine.

• Edit an existing page and insert a link (see above) to the new page.
• Save the page you just edited — your new link will be red, indicating that it doesn’t yet exist.
• Click on the new (red) link and you will be invited to create the new page.

• Edit the page you wish to remove.
• Delete all the text in it (all the text, even spaces).
• Save the (empty) page.

• You must be logged in to upload files.
• Edit or create the page on which you’d like to make a link to the uploaded file.
• Click on the upload icon (it looks like this:) above the editing area.
• That will open an upload window. In that window:
  • Click [Browse] to select the file to upload.
  • Click [Upload] to upload the file
• Click on the name of the newly uploaded file (or any other file in the list) to insert a link to it on the page you are editing.
• Uploaded files (documents and images) are partitioned based on their namespaces. You will see the available namespaces in the list on the upload window.

• Continue on to Intermediate usage information, or
• See the full Formatting Syntax guide.