This page describes how to edit pages on the BAOC website in specific detail. For more more generalized help, or more complex examples, please see MediaWiki's Help:Editing page (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing). If you are just starting out and would like to experiment with a few things, please edit the Sandbox page on our website, where you are free to experiment. Edits you make on this page, or on any viewable page of the website will be immediately visible to visitors, so please avoid making changes on "public" pages until you've had some practice in the Sandbox. Thanks!
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What is a Wiki?
The BAOC website has been converted from a traditional website to a wiki. In a wiki, anyone can easily edit any unprotected page and have those changes posted immediately to the page.
How to Edit a Page
To edit a page, click on the "edit this page" link at the top of the page (pages on the BAOC website that are not part of the wiki do not have an edit link.) This will bring you to a page with a text box containing the editable text of the page. You can modify the content in that box.
After you've made your changes, press the "Show preview" button to see how your changes will look. If more changes are needed, scroll to the bottom of the page and make the new changes in the edit panel.
- Note: Please use the preview feature to review your changes, instead of saving the changes and then initiating another edit when you see something that should be changed. Of course, it will occasionally happen that you think you have everything the way you want it, save the changes, and then notice something that should be changed. That's okay, but we try to not "clutter" the page history with a lot of small changes.
Before you are done making changes, you should write a short description of your change in the "Summary" field below the edit box. That description gets displayed in the page history, and for non-minor changes the summary is displayed as a tool-tip in the Recent Changes panel on the Home page.
When you are ready to quit editing and have your changes saved (i.e., made visible to everyone), click on "Save page". If you change your mind, and want to cancel the editing session, click on "Cancel".
- Note: For minor changes, the "This is a minor edit" checkbox should be checked. If that checkbox is not checked, the change will be "announced" by a link in the "Recent Changes" panel on the Home page, and your description of the change will be displayed when the reader hovers the pointer over the link. (See Minor Edits below.)
Every page has an associated Talk page, which contains comments about the page from other users. The talk page is reached with the "Discuss this page" link at the bottom of the page. Note, however, that we generally do not use talk pages.
How to Create a New Page
To create a new page, edit an existing page to add a link to the new page with the desired name of the page you would like to create, it might look something like this when you are editing: [[My New Page]]. Once you save the page, you'll notice the new link in the page that points to the still non-existent page. When you follow this link you will be offered the opportunity to define the initial contents of the page, and it's just like editing a page above.
- Note: If you create a new page with a link that does not start with a slash character (e.g., [[My New Page]]), the page will be at the "root" level of the wiki structure, which is probably not what you want. To create a page that is a "child" of the current page, start the link with a slash (e.g., [[/My New Page|My New Page]]). In that case, you should duplicate the page name as shown in the example, so that the slash will not be displayed as part of the link text. (If that's not clear, you can experiment in the Sandbox.)
If you would like to create sort of a secret new page, without any links to it until you are done, you may create a URL that makes sense for pointing at the new page, like http://baoc.org/wiki/Schedule/2018/My_New_Event, and place it in your browser's address bar. Once you go there, you will need to click on the edit link to edit the page. When using this technique, be sure to add a link to your new page on some existing page when you are done—otherwise no one will ever see the new page!
Tips on Editing BAOC Pages
Please use formatting that is consistent with the other pages on the website. We want visitors to see a uniform style throughout the website, even though many people might work on the content.
Please limit edits to information relevant to the club or to Orienteering. The BAOC website is not a good place to promote controversial points of view, but rather simply a place to record information about the clubs events, achievements of members of the club, or useful training information for Orienteers.
Please cite your sources if you copy information from another place into this website. You should not place material copyrighted by others on this website in such a way that the club will be accused of any copyright infringements while displaying the work. If you contribute your own original material, please be aware that once you post it here it becomes the communal property of the club, and that other members may edit your work. Please be prepared for that.
Minor Edits
When editing a page, the default is to mark the edit as being "minor". Minor edits generally mean spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearrangement of text. (It is possible to hide minor edits when viewing recent changes.)
- Note: If a change is not marked as a minor edit, a link to the page will be listed in the Recent Changes panel on the Home page. When that is done, the Summary for the change and the ID of the person who made the change are displayed in a balloon when the mouse pointer hovers over the link. That feature might influence when you choose to indicate edits as not minor, and the Summary you provide for non-minor edits.
Page History
Every page has a recorded history, which can be seen by clicking on the "Page history" link at the bottom of the page. The history shows when changes were made, by whom, whether or not the change was flagged as minor, and the summaries that were entered. More significantly, any two versions of the page can be compared to see the changes that were made between those versions. (Unfortunately, the differences display shows the paragraphs that changed, but does not highlight the changes within the paragraphs. You'll need to visually compare the two versions in the differences display to find the actual changes.)
Pages with Sub Menus
Some website sections, like the FAQ and Site sections, have a sub-menu on the right that organizes the pages in the section (see the example on the right). To add a new FAQ page, for example, click on the "edit menu" link at the bottom of the list of all the FAQs displayed at the top right of any of the FAQ pages. All FAQ pages share the same menu, using a technique in the wiki of using a "template" for the menu itself. If you edit the menu's template, the update will be immediately visible on all pages that use it.
Once you edit the FAQ menu to include a new page, return to any of the FAQ pages, refresh the page, and the new link will appear in the menu. Follow the new link to create content for the new page. All areas of the site that use a sub-menu like this should use a template to store the menu. Incidentally, if you have named the page and the link in the sub menu exactly alike, then the page that you are currently on in the section should appear not as a link in the menu, but as a highlighted item.
- Note: Any page can have a sub menu. That might be useful to remember if you create a set of pages that will share a set of links (e.g., as is done with the FAQ pages).
Wiki Markup
The wiki markup is the syntax system you use to format a page. Most of the examples below were copied from MediaWiki's Help:Editing page (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing), where you can find the more complete list.
In the left column of the table below, you can see what effects are possible. In the right column, you can see how those effects were achieved. In other words, to make text look like it looks in the left column, type it in the format you see in the right column.
You may want to keep this page open in a separate browser window for reference. If you want to try out things without danger of doing any harm, you can do so in the Sandbox. Try opening the Sandbox in a separate window or tab and keeping this page open for reference.
Sections, Paragraphs, Lists and Lines
What it looks like | What you type |
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Start your sections as follows: New Section Subsection Sub-subsection
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== New Section == === Subsection === ==== Sub-subsection ==== |
Section headings automatically create anchors that can be referenced in links on the current page or on another page. By default, anchors have the full text of the section headings. If a section heading is long, or might be changed in the future (which would break links to the section), you might want to define a "substitute anchor" for the heading. Long section heading |
<div id="Foo"></div> === Long section heading === |
A single newline generally has no effect on the layout. These can be used to separate sentences within a paragraph. Some editors find that this aids editing and improves the diff function (used internally to compare different versions of a page). But an empty line starts a new paragraph.
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A single newline generally has no effect on the layout. These can be used to separate sentences within a paragraph. Some editors find that this aids editing and improves the ''diff'' function (used internally to compare different versions of a page). But an ''empty'' line starts a new paragraph. |
You can break lines
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You can break lines<br/> without starting a new paragraph. |
marks the end of a list item.
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* Lists are easy to do: ** Start every line with a star. *** More stars means deeper levels. **** A newline in a list marks the end of a list item. * An empty line starts a new list. |
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# Numbered lists are also good ## very organized ## easy to follow ### easier still |
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* You can even do mixed lists *# and nest them *#* like this |
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; Definition list : list of definitions ; item : the item's definition ; another item : the other item's definition |
A manual newline starts a new paragraph.
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: A colon indents a line or paragraph. A manual newline starts a new paragraph. |
IF a line starts with a space THEN it will be formatted exactly as typed; in a fixed-width font; lines won't wrap; ENDIF
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IF a line starts with a space THEN it will be formatted exactly as typed; in a fixed-width font; lines won't wrap; ENDIF |
A horizontal dividing line: this is above it and this is below it.
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A horizontal dividing line: this is above it ---- and this is below it. |
Links and URLs
What it looks like | What you type |
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Page about Thwarting Spambots.
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Page about [[Thwarting Spambots]]. |
We can hide your email.
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We can [[Thwarting Spambots|hide your email]]. |
On the Thwarting Spambots page, there could be a link to a Details child page.
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On the Thwarting Spambots page, there could be a link to a [[/Details]] child page. |
Economics#See also is a link to a section within another page. Links and URLs is a link to a section on the current page. example is a link to an anchor on the current page that was created using an id attribute.
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[[Economics#See also]] is a link to a section (or anchor) within another page. [[#Links and URLs | Links and URLs]] is a link to a section on the current page. [[#example | example]] is a link to an anchor on the current page that was created using an id attribute. <div id="example"></div> |
Automatically hide stuff in parentheses: kingdom. Automatically hide namespace: Village Pump. Or both: Manual of Style But not: [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Links|]]
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Automatically hide stuff in parentheses: [[kingdom (biology)|]]. Automatically hide namespace: [[Wikipedia:Village Pump|]]. Or both: [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)|]] But not: [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Links|]] |
The weather in London is a page that doesn't exist yet.
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[[The weather in London]] is a page that doesn't exist yet. |
When adding a comment to a Talk page, you should sign it by adding three tildes to add your user name: or four to add user name plus time & date:
Five tildes gives the time & date alone:
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When adding a comment to a Talk page, you should sign it by adding three tildes to add your user name: : ~~~ or four for user name plus time & date: : ~~~~ Five tildes gives the time & date alone: : ~~~~~ |
Three ways to link to external (non-wiki) sources:
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Three ways to link to external (non-wiki) sources: # Bare URL: http://www.nupedia.com/ # Unnamed link: [http://www.nupedia.com/] # Named link: [http://www.nupedia.com Nupedia] |
Email Addresses
What it looks like | What you type |
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An email link for a known member: or, using the name of a position: or, using a one-time entered email address and name: or, using a one-time entered email address and position: or, using their ID in the Member database: |
An email link for a known member: <email>Van Boughner</email> or, using the name of a position: <email>Webmaster</email> or, using a one-time entered email address and name: <email>madeupemail@madeupdomain,Made Up Name</email> or, using a one-time entered email address and position: <email>madeupemail@madeupdomain,,Made Up Position</email> or, using their ID in the Member database: <email>10</email> |
For the first, second, and last forms, note that the text inside the <email> tags must exactly match a name, position, or ID number known to the wiki. In particular, there must not be any extra spaces, and any desired formatting must be specified outside the <email> tags (e.g., '''<email>...</email>''' instead of <email>'''...'''</email> ). If the specified name, position, or ID is not defined in the databases, the <email> tags will display an ugly error.
More information is available concerning email address protection on this site.
Images
What it looks like | What you type |
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The image rotation system uses thumbnails from the photo gallery. Within the <imgarray></imgarray> tags you may specify the directory name of one album (as seen in the URL, not within the title of the album). By default a picture is floated to the right, with the top of the picture beginning where the tag was placed in the text, so it is generally a good idea to include the tag before the paragraph next to which you'd like it to appear. If you don't place an album directory within the tag, you will get a random picture picked from among all of the albums in the gallery. If you include this tag more than once on the page, you will get a different picture every time, even if you use the same album directory in them all. Pictures will not be selected from sub-albums. If you place the word left within the tags, separated from the album name with a comma, the picture will be floated to the left instead of the right. Note also that if you place a directory name (from the gallery) and an image name from within that directory together, instead of a random image you will get the one specific image you have asked for. |
<imgarray>longchamps04</imgarray> The image rotation system uses thumbnails from the photo gallery. Within the <imgarray></imgarray> tags you may specify the directory name of one album (as seen in the URL, not within the title of the pages). By default a picture is floated to the right, with the top of the picture beginning where the tag was placed in the text, so it is generally a good idea to include the tag ''before'' the paragraph next to which you'd like it to appear. <imgarray></imgarray> If you don't place an album directory within the tag, you will get a random picture picked from among '''all''' of the albums in the gallery. If you include this tag more than once on the page, you will get a different picture every time, even if you use the same album directory in them all. Pictures will not be selected from sub-albums. <imgarray>left,members/Van_Boughner</imgarray> If you place the word '''left''' within the tags, separated from the album name with a comma, the picture will be floated to the left instead of the right. Note also that if you place a directory name (from the gallery) and an image name from within that directory together, instead of a random image you will get the one specific image you have asked for. |
When you have a specific image on hand that you want to add to a page, here's how to do it:
- Convert the image to a jpg (on your own computer, because the imgarray scripts can't handle any other file types yet)
- Upload the image into the BAOC photo gallery by logging into it (which requires a special logon account), and selecting "add photos" from the drop-down menu in one of the existing albums, or you can first create a new sub-album in an existing album. If you create a new album in this step, be sure to rename it from "album02" (or whatever) to something useful, like "twinpeaks", before proceeding with the next step.
- Visit the picture you want displayed by looking at its album and clicking on its thumbnail. Then, in the address bar of your browser you will see something like this: "http://baoc.org/gallery/twinpeaks/TwinPeaksDrivingDirections". Copy the album name ("twinpeaks" in this case), the slash character, and the image name ("TwinPeaksDrivingDirections"), using the copy-and-paste functions of your browser. That is, for this example, you want to copy "twinpeaks/TwinPeaksDrivingDirections".
- Go to the wiki page where you want the image placed, and insert a tag with this form: <imgarray>twinpeaks/TwinPeaksDrivingDirections</imgarray>, substituting the desired album and image names.
Maps
- Note: As explained in the note below, maps currently do not display correctly.
What it looks like | What you type |
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<map> class = smallmap zoom = 10 37.341468,-121.719579,Joseph D. Grant County Park </map> Click on the pin in the map at the left to see how the park name is displayed. |
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<map> class = smallmap center = 37.35,-121.72 zoom = 13 descriptions = on letters = on typecontrol = on 37.341468,-121.719579,<a href="/wiki/Schedule/2006/Joe_Grant">Joe Grant</a> 37.35,-121.72,Center of Map </map> Click on the pins in the map at the left to see how the link and description are displayed. |
The <map> tag is an extension to our wiki inspired by the various MediaWiki extensions for Google Maps already in existence. However, I wanted to write one of our own for the BAOC website, because the others were either too complicated, were for more modern versions of MediaWiki software, or wouldn't allow you to have more than one map per page.
- Note: As of 2020 (and for awhile now), display of maps does not work correctly, because the Google Map API has changed and the website has not been changed accordingly. Either the map is not displayed at all, or the map is displayed, with any specified pins, but a Google error message is displayed initially, "For development purposes only" watermarks are displayed across the map, the map is dimmed, and satellite and hybrid views are not available. (If the maps above do not exhibit those behaviors, the problem has been fixed.)
The text between the <map> tags needs to contain the parameters for how and what to display on the map, each line should contain a separate item. (Note: Do not put a comment within a map definition.) Here are examples of what you can place on each line:
- class = bigmap
- smallmap (300 pixels wide x 200 pixels high)
- map (500 pixels wide x 400 pixels high)
- bigmap (600 pixels high, fills available width)
- center = 37.4419,-122.1419
- The map will be centered on the coordinates given for center, if included, otherwise the map will be centered on the first of the co-ordinates listed below. (See below for how to find the numbers to use.)
- zoom = 14
- Zoom is 0 for furthest away, 17 for closest in. The default is 13.
- descriptions = off
- Descriptions is on by default, and when on and there is description text for a coordinate (like the ones shown below), a description for that push pin will be displayed in a popup bubble when the pin is clicked on.
- typecontrol = on
- Typecontrol is off by default. When on, the control buttons for displaying map, satellite, or hybrid views are available.
- letters = on
- Letters is off by default. When on, letters appear within the push pins (but only if descriptions is also on). The locations are lettered in the order in which they are listed in the map tag.
- directions = on
- Directions is off by default, because we don't want people to get driving directions to a misplaced pin location. When directions is on (and descriptions is also on), the popup bubble for each pin contains links for Google directions to and from the pin location.
- 37.4419,-122.1419,Google Headquarters
- A pair of coordinates and a description of what the pin represents. (See below for how to find the numbers to use. The description will be visible on the map, in a popup bubble when the reader clicks on the pin, but only if descriptions has been left turned on, as described above.)
- You may include as many coordinate lines as you like. Each will be represented by a pin on the map.
- 37.4419,-122.1419,<a href="http://google.com">Google Headquarters</a>
- When the text describing the coordinates contains an anchor tag, the popup bubble text will be a link to the given URL (if descriptions has been left turned on, as described above).
- You may include as many coordinate lines as you like. Each will be represented by a pin on the map.
Here is how to figure out latitude and longitude numbers for a pin location:
- In a separate browser window, go to a Google map (http://maps.google.com/) showing the area of interest. Scroll around, zoom, etc. until the point of interest (e.g., the entrance to the park) is at the exact center of the map (zooming in helps at the end; Satellite view might help you select the exact point of interest). Depending on the browser you're using, you might be able to right click (PC) or Control-click (Mac) on the point of interest, and select "Center map here" from the popup menu to shift the map to exactly center the point.
- If you're not able to invoke the popup menu that includes "Center map here", you can drag the map by clicking (and holding down the mouse button) anywhere on the map, and dragging the map until the point of interest is at the center of the display area.
- Then click on the "Link to this page" link above the upper right corner of the map. It will open a popup in the upper right corner of the map. The field under "Paste link in email or IM" will be selected. Use the copy function of the browser to copy that URL, and paste it into a text editor (e.g., Notepad [PC] or TextEdit [Mac]). The actual URL that you get will depend on how you got to the map location—the most simple form of the URL looks like this:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=37.341485,-121.719611&spn=0.009775,0.015342&z=16
- From the URL, select the numbers after "&ll=". (Note: You do not want the numbers that follow "&sll=".) Use the program's copy function to copy the numbers to the clipboard, and paste them into the wiki page in a coordinate line between the <map> tags. For example, the numbers you want to grab from the link shown above are:
37.341485,-121.719611
Character Formatting
What it looks like | What you type |
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Emphasize, strongly, very strongly.
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''Emphasize'', '''strongly''', '''''very strongly'''''. |
A typewriter font for monospace text
or for computer code:
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A typewriter font for <tt>monospace text</tt> or for computer code: <code>int main()</code> |
You can use small text for captions. |
You can use <small>small text</small> for captions. |
You can You can also mark
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You can <s>strike out deleted material</s> and <u>underline new material</u>. You can also mark <del>deleted material</del> and <ins>inserted material</ins> using logical markup rather than visual markup. |
Diacritical marks:
| À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ñ ß Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö Ø Œ Ù Ú Û Ü Ÿ à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ñ ò ó ô õ ö ø œ ù ú û ü ÿ |
Punctuation:
| ¿ ¡ § ¶ … † ‡ • – — ‹ › « » ‘ ’ “ ” [ ] ​     |
Commercial symbols:
| ™ © ® ¢ € ¥ £ ¤ |
Special symbols:
| ← → ↑ ↓ ↔ ⇐ ⇒ ⇑ ⇓ ⇔ < > ¼ ½ ¾ ± ° # × ✖ ¹ ² ³ 😊 🙂 😉 🙁 ✓ ✔ |
Suppressing interpretation of markup:
| <nowiki>Link → (''to'') the [[Main Page]]</nowiki> |
Commenting page source:
| <!-- comment here --> |
Embedded HTML
It is possible to include any HTML on a page by enclosing it in <html> and </html> tags. This should be used sparingly to avoid confusing future editors who do not know HTML, but it can be useful from time to time.
Note that several simple HTML tags can be used without actually including <html> and </html> tags. Here are some of those recognized HTML tags: <b>, <big>, <br />, <div>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <i>, <p>, <pre>, <s>, <small>, <sup>, <tt>, <u> (and their corresponding end tags, of course).
Tables
Tables can be formatted on a wiki page, as described on this page.
About the Table of Contents
Having at least four headers on a page triggers the TOC to appear in front of the first header (or after introductory sections). Putting __TOC__ anywhere forces the TOC to appear at that point (instead of just before the first header), regardless of the number of headers on the page. Putting __NOTOC__ anywhere forces the TOC to not be displayed.
If there are headers that you do not want to have listed in the TOC, use HTML tags in the form <h2>...</h2>, <h3>...</h3>, etc. instead of the equal-sign notations to define the headers (where the number in the HTML tags matches the number of equal signs that you would have used). The header will look the same. That is, for example, instead of
- === Subsection ===
use
- <h3> Subsection </h3>
Miscellaneous
Placing __NOEDITSECTION__ anywhere in the page forces the section-editing links to disappear. Those links are the faint word "edit" at the right margin at the beginning of each section of the page. (The "edit" links are displayed only when a member is logged in.) Note, however, that the links do not work correctly if HTML header tags are used to format any header on the page.
Redirects
When an old page needs to be retired and you want a new page in a new location to take over, you should not simply delete the old page. Instead, you should have all access attempts to the old page automatically redirected to the new page. That way any existing references to the old page will not become broken links.
Here's how to set up redirection to the new location: Edit the old page, remove everything (which presumably has been copied to the new page), and leave the page containing only one line in this form:
- #redirect [[Sandbox/FAQ_Sandbox]]
(except change "Sandbox/FAQ_Sandbox" above to reference the new page location — i.e., it should be everything after "http://baoc.org/wiki/" in the URL for the new page).
Once you do that, the old page can become difficult to edit again (because subsequent access of the page will automatically re-direct). To edit the old page again, you might need to add "?redirect=no" (without the quotes) onto the end of it's URL in your browser (e.g., http://baoc.org/wiki/Sandbox/FAQ_Sandbox?redirect=no).