Complete Tutorial for Creating a New Page

So you've joined the site and browsed around. Now your itching to get started adding your voice to the site. Wonderful! Here is a guide to get you on your way.

There are several basic steps that you should follow when creating a page:

  1. Create the new page (from an existing page or the "create new page" tool on the how to edit pages page.
  2. Fill in conent using the editor
  3. Add a comments module
  4. Add Page Tags
  5. Identify a Parent page

These steps and features are explained in more detail below.

Making a New Page

Before creating a page, make sure it doesn't already exist! If it does, you can just contribute to that page. Do a search or look through the page categories to find pages similar to the one you want to create. If your idea doesn't fit with an exist page, proceed with creating a new one. The first thing you need to do is create a page on the "how to edit pages" page. It's very simple you just type in the name of page in the "create new page" box and click the button. This will take you directly the "editor" of the new page.

The Editor

The editor is how you put the content into your page. While editing your session is locked an protected, this means that no one else can edit a page while you are editing it. Everything you want on your page goes in the editor box. If you type in some text in this box, it will appear on your page. Every new line in the editor equals a new line on the webpage. But you'll want to do more than just type in straight text. You can uses the little icons directly above your editor text box to make your page look more interesting. Play around with the buttons, you can add headers, bold, underscore, add images, create tables and so much more! The editor is how you make the magic. You can also create a new page from an existing pages editor by making a link to the page you want to create. Type [[[new page name]]]. This will create a link to a page that doesn't exist. Click on the link and it will take you to the editor of the page you just linked to.

Wiki Syntax

For more advanced web designers you can use the wiki syntax to format, embed gadgets or media, and so much more! For example, if you type **word** the word will end up bolded like this: word. Look at the wikidot.com documentation pages for some more advice. There are tutorials there for creating RSS feeds, embedding, creating polls and much more! Here are some good pages to get started with: wiki syntax, embedding code from other services, snippets-page making solutions, and modules (short cuts to complex page development

Adding A Comments Module

Before finishing editing be sure to add a section for comments at the end of the page. The comments section allows others to provide feedback on the content. Perhaps someone just visited a restaurant you wrote about and they loved it! Other's can come along and edit and add to the page you've just created. However, a simple comment like "this restaurant is great, highly recommended" doesn't necessarily call for editing. People can just add comments to the bottom the page for statements and opinions like this. The comments box can also be a place where people request more information. A person might want to know the phone number to the restaurant to suggest it but they don't have the information to add to the piece. The comments box is a great place to request that info.

More tools for page creation

After exiting the editor, you should see a line of gray boxes on the bottom right-hand side of the page. These boxes are more tools that help you develop your page.

  1. Edit: this is how you return to the editor of the page.
  2. Rate: this allows people to rate the content of your page.
  3. Page Tags (see more about page tags below), followed by history.
  4. History: gives details on all the edits that have been made to a page and shows the changes.
  5. Files: You can attach some files to your page. Right now websites do not have much storage space (100MB). Files like images and video take up a lot of space so if you want to include large files its better to embed them using a service like flikr or you tube.
  6. Print: self-explanatory.
  7. Site Tools: ere you can find "wanted pages"-pages that someone has linked to but it doesn't exist yet and "orpaned pages"-pages that aren't linked to any other page.
  8. Options (see more about options below)

Page Tags

So you've got a page, what next? You've got to let people know about it! Page tags are keywords that describe your page. This is very important because it is how people can find your page! On this wiki website people can search by category, these categories are generated from the page tags people attach to their pages. You should create some tags that would help people find your page. Here's the page where the page tags are kept: Pag Tags The larger the word on the "search by category" page the more links and the bigger the word the more attention it will draw. You should look at the categories that already exist and see where yor page might fit. Being in a larger category, makes it more likely that someone that is just browsing will happen upon your page. You should also include a few more specific tag words about your page.

Options Button

The Options Button provides a few more tools.

  1. Edit Section which allows you to edit parts of a page with out having to go through the whole thing. Useful for long pages or very popular pages that others might want to edit.
  2. Append which allows you to add to the content with out editing all or parts of the page.
  3. Backlinks shows you all the pages that link to yours. If you don't have any you'll want to find other related pages and created some links to yours.
  4. Page Source shows you all the info (syntax module texts etc) without actually having to go into the editor. This is useful if you want to just copy something to another page and prevents you from being locked out or locking someone else out of editing.
  5. Parent (see below for more on the parent function)
  6. Block allows Site Administrators to determine whether that page is editable or not. If you have a page that you think should not be edited, contact the ucsdgradwiki@gmail with your reason why. Because this is a wiki and it's a community website, we should try to keep as many of the sites open as possible.
  7. Rename allows you to change name of your page. Pages are linked by their page name (bear in mind that the title on a page may not be the page name. You can find the page name in the url address.) Make your page name something easy to find and link.
  8. Delete. Delete pages very carefully, once they're gone they're gone forever. A general guide is only delete a page if there are no dependencies (other pages link to it and included in it) and the page is not very old. Even if you don't add much to it other's can find it useful and fill it out. A site can have unlimited pages so their is really no need to delete anything.

Parent Function

Page Tags and the Parent function are two of most important aspects of publishing a page. The tag function places your page on the page tag/category page. The parent function puts you in the site map. Parent allows you to identify a page that you are a subset of. For example, if you created a page on hillcrest, you could identify the page neighborhood guide as a parent page. A site map is generated from these kinds of tags and make finding info easier. Additionally, there are some categories under "check it out" in the left side navigation bar. The link on these pages (with the acception the fun stuff page) is generated through the parent/child relationship. A child is a page that has listed another page as a parent. List any of those categories in the navigation bar as the parent for you page and it will automatically show up on that page.

This info should get you on your way. Check out the editing-reference-guide for more info from other grad wiki users. And now that you're initiated you can start contributing editing tricks and tutorials of your own! And don't forget the wikidot.com documentation pages to find even more info!

For tutorials on other things check out the tutorials page

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