Help:Contents

synopsis

Creating a wiki entry is somewhat different from creating regular HTML pages.

Here are some notes on how to create a wiki page without having it look messy.

paragraphs

When you enter text, separated by a newline, mediawiki will make it continuous, unless you create a paragraph by typing two newlines.

If you want to have entries each on a separate line, you can make a list of it by prefixing an asterisk (*), so it will look like this:

• these are
• separate entries

You can (albeit a big exception) use <br/> tags to put text on a new line, but it is not recommended because it is not maintenance friendly.

lists

Using an asterisk/star (*) in front of your lines, you can make bullet-lists (as seen above), but you can also use hash/pound (#) to make a numbered list:

1. first numbered item, line prefixed with '#'
   1. first subitem, prefixed with '##'
   2. second subitem, prefixed with '##'
2. second item, again prefixed with '#'
   • first subitem, line prefixed with '#*'

style

You can accentuate text by using single quotes. One quote just works as 'expected', but using multiple single quotes around a text part, it will make it italic, bold or underlined.

• ''two quotes'' makes the text italic
• '''three quotes''' makes the text bold
• '''''five quotes''''' makes the text bold-italic

monospace or preformat

If you put a space before
each line of text,
it will preformat the text
ideal for code or configuration settings
note that text formatting does work
You can also use
<pre>tags</pre> but you will lose '''text formatting'''

templates

There are several templates to help you (with markup, hinting and linking) They are called by placing them in two curly-brackets. This is a list of some of the templates:

• {{!}}: Draws a pipe symbol: '|'. It is a special wiki character which you sometimes cannot use directly.
• {{Hint to add yourself}}: adds a hint box how to add yourself to a list (typically used for events/workshops)
• {{Hint to add yourself counter}}: adds a hint box how to add yourself to a numbered list (typically used for events/workshops)
• {{InfoBox}}: Creates an info box using some generic variables, converting it into html. See: [Template:InfoBox]
• {{Refresh}}: adds a 'refresh table' button which forces a table generated by a query to be updated by purging the page.
• {{~|variable name}}: creates a logic inverse on the variable name

tables

Mediawiki tried to make tables simpler than the HTML tables, but the syntax still can be quite daunting. Here is a sample

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Table title
! Header 1
! Header 2
! ...
! Header n
|-
| line 1 column 1
| line 1 column 2
| line 1 ...
| line 1 column n
|-
| ...
|-
| line n column 1
| line n column 2
| line n ...
| line n column n
|}

Table title

Header 1	Header 2	...	Header n
line 1 column 1	line 1 column 2	line 1 ...	line 1 column n
...
line n column 1	line n column 2	line n ...	line n column n

see also

mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting