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Overview of Swikis
A Swiki isn't like a conventional website; there is no "webmaster" and any participant can add, delete, or edit the content of the site. There is no predefined structure so it can grow in whatever directions best suit its users. Any member of the Annual Meeting staff would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the site, so feel free to pull us aside, or send email to caseyj@ucar.edu.
Check out the Swiki Swiki if you are interested in learning more about swikis.
Logging In
New Pages
Adding & Editing Information
Concurrent Editing
History
Uploading Files
Locking a Page
Basic Editing
Logging In
Swiki pages can be viewed by anyone. However, to add or modify pages, you need to login. Annual meeting participants have been assigned a user name based on the email address used during registration.
- User name: myname - if your email address is myname@mycompany.com
- User name: my.name - if your email address is my.name@mycompany.com
- password: nsdl2003
Certain actions will prompt you for identification (editing pages or uploading files for example) but you will only have to provide that information once for each session you spend working with the Swiki. Most browsers will also create a cookie if you choose and can make your information persistent over sessions.
This Login functionality enables everyone to know who made which updates to the page.
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New Pages
Creating a new page is a simple process.
- Go to the page from which you want the new page to link.
- Click the "Edit" link under "Swiki Features" in the left hand sidebar.
- Add the name of the page you wish to create at the appropriate place in the current page's text. Be sure to surround the new page name with * (star) characters, for example *Our Strand's First Substrand*
- Click on the "save" button below the text editing area.
- Click on the "create" button next to the new page name.
- Add your content to the new page.
- Click "save". Your new page is now linked to the page on which you created the link.
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Adding & Editing Information
There are two ways to add information to a page.
- Click the "Edit" link or icon on the page you wish to modify. You can then add or edit the page in the box provided. Click "save" when you're done.
- Some pages may have an append box into which you can directly enter text. Click the "Add to the Page" button below the box when you are done entering text. This method only allows you to add information, not to change any which already exists.
You can either enter your text directly or you can create it in a text editor or word processor and then paste it in. If you're comfortable with writing HTML you can use tags to format text and the Swiki will interpret them. The Swiki also has its own formatting tags which you can use. See the editing tips for an overview, or click on the "Help" link for complete details.
Because a large number of people may be adding information to a page, it's a good idea to preceed your additions or changes with your initials enclosed in parentheses to make following the thread of the discussion easier.
Don't worry about making a mistake or deleting content. The Swiki has a "history" feature (see below) to deal with this.
If you want to create your own append box you can do so by putting a + (plus) character by itself on a line in the page source. For more options when dealing with append boxes click the "Help" link.
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Concurrent Editing
Conflicts can occur when more than one person is editing or adding to a page at the same time. While this can be dealt with, it may be easier for you to create your additions to the page in a text editor such as TextEdit (Mac) or NotePad (PC) and then cut and paste that content into the Swiki. By reducing the time that you have a page accessed for modification, you reduce the chances that someone else has it accessed at the same time.
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History
Every addition and edit to a Swiki page is kept in a history file. This makes it easy to "roll back" to any previous version of a page or to retrieve content that has been inadvertently deleted. To use this feature do the following:
- Click the "History" link or icon.
- From the list choose the version you wish to return to. Most often, this will be the version immediately below the current version. Ignore the "+/-" button unless you want to compare two versions of the page for differences.
- Select and copy all of the text in the "Edit Text" box.
- Click the "Edit" icon.
- Replace the current page content by pasting in the recovered content.
- Click the "save" button.
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Uploading files
Please keep uploads to 5MB or less per session if possible.
- Click on the "Uploads" link to access the uploads page.
- Files that are specific to a strand should be uploaded to a page in the strand, usually the one from which they will be accessible. To do this select the "upload to the page" button if it isn't already selected.
- If you wish to have a link to the uploaded file created automatically, select that button. Note that the link will appear at the end of the page, but you can cut and paste it to anywhere that you wish.
- Click on the "Choose File" button and navigate to the location of the file on your computer.
- Click on the "upload" button to complete the upload. You should now see your file listed with other uploaded files.
Please be aware that Internet Explorer sometimes has trouble uploading files correctly. If you experience this problem try another browser if you can (Netscape and Mozilla seem to work more consistently). If you continue to have problems ask a member of the support staff for help.
Always use a unique filename that includes some abbreviated form of the session name and your name.
Files will overwrite without warning if they are uploaded with the same name as another file.
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Locking a page
There are times when you may want to keep other users from adding to or modifying a page. This can be accomplished by clicking on the "Lock" link. You will need to supply a password for the page. It's important that you remember the password, or you won't be able to unlock the page to change it.
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Basic Editing for Swikis
The underlying environment that provides the editable workspaces and the navigation between the reports is called a Swiki (an implementation of a Wiki written in Squeak/Smalltalk.) This environment is quite flexible by nature, but exploiting its flexibility requires an understanding of some basic Swiki rules. Don't worry initially about all of the features it provides. Learning what you need to know to start adding and editing takes only a few minutes and in most cases is all you'll need.
Using HTML
If you're familiar with HTML you'll find that all of the formatting tags you know and use will be interpreted correctly by the Swiki. If you don't know HTML that's fine too as the Swiki has it's own formatting to do many of the same things.
Text formatting can be done either at the time the text is entered (or pasted if you're using a text editor or word processor) or it can be added when you edit a page.
Linking to pages or files
- Links to pages and files are always put between * (star) characters.
- You create a new page by adding a link to it on an existing page.
- To create a link to a page that exists on this site, type *Existing Page's Name* or *Page's Swiki Page Number*, e.g. *22*. The page name is what you see in the title bar when viewing a page and in the "Title:" box when editing.
- To create a link to an existing page on an external site, type: *http://externalpage.url*. For example, *http://nsdl.comm.nsdl.org* appears as http://nsdl.comm.nsdl.org, and *NSDL.org website>http://nsdl.org* appears as NSDL.org website.
- If the link is to an image (url ends in '.gif', '.jpeg', '.jpg', or '.png'), the image will be placed on the page at the location of the link. You can move the image by moving the link.
- You can link to a file that exists in this site's Uploads area. To view a list of available files, click the "Uploads" link or icon. To create the link, go to the page where you want to make the link and click the "Edit" link or icon. Type the filename between *+ and +*. For example, *+myUpload.pdf+* will create a link to the uploaded file "myUpload.pdf". In this case you will need to use both the + (plus) and * (star) characters.
- To create a link to send email, type *name@domain.ext*. For example, *achaux@ucar.edu* appears as achaux@ucar.edu, and *Casey Jones>caseyj@ucar.edu* appears as Casey Jones.
Horizontal rules
- You can create a horizontal rule by making a new line that contains only an _ (underscore) character. This is often useful for separating topics on a page.
Paragraph breaks
- You can make breaks between paragraphs by pressing the enter key twice. The blank line this creates in the edit window will be traslated into a paragraph break in the view window.
Lists
- Numbered lists can be created by starting each entry in the list with a # (pound or hash) character.
- Bulleted lists can be created by starting each entry in the list with a - (hyphen or dash) character.
- Lists can be nested
- by combining # and - characters
- at the beginning of a line.
HTML tags
- To make text bold, surround it by <b> and </b>.
- To make text italicized, surround it by <i> and </i>.
- To add a break between paragraphs use <p>.
- To make the next line of text start on a new line without a paragraph break use <br>.
- To add a block of existing HTML code, simply copy and paste it in and enclose it within <html> and </html> tags and the Swiki formatting rules will not apply.
Special characters
- There are three characters (&, <, >) that have special meaning in HTML and the Swiki adds two characters (*, @) to that list. In order to use these characters in regular text, you will have to type the following substitutes. Don't forget the final semi-colon.
- To get & type &
- To get < type <
- To get > type >
- To get * type ☆
- To get @ type &at;
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