Getting started
Make an account
At the top right of this page, click on "Create Account".
Enter a username and unique password, and then confirm the password. You can enter your real name if you like, but it is not strictly necessary to make an account.
Then, the CAPTCHA question asked you in which city the Varia server is hosted? The answer is "rotterdam".
Then, click "Create your account".
Making a new page
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Starting_a_new_page
- It might be easiest to search for the pagename that you want to create, and if it does not exist yet, then you can click on the red link to create that page.
Renaming a page
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Moving_a_page
- MediaWiki counter-intuitively calls this "move page". With this logic, "moving" a page is the same as renaming it.
Editing a page
Editing can be done in many different ways, but we have found the following MediaWiki documentation useful: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing.
Below you can find a cheatsheet with commonly used wikitext mark up, accompanied with a few remarks on quirks we discovered while working with wiki-to-print.
But first of all, it's good to know is that there are two editors that you can use to edit your text:
Visual editor
- to use it, click
Edit - uses a WYSIWYG editor
- Visual editor user guide
Wikitext editor
- to use it, click
Edit source - uses a specific mark up language: wikitext
- Wiki syntax user guide
Cheatsheet + remarks
Headers
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting
- A header1 is written as:
=Title here= - Subtitles can be marked up as any other headers (header2
==Title here==, header3===Title here===, etc.)
Images
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images
- If you have images, and you want to work with captions, we suggest to use
frameorthumbas image formats, these make the caption show up.- In wikitext: You can add the image width (in pixels) and caption in the image element (
[[File:Imagename.jpg|thumb|480px|caption here]]). - In the visual editor: click on the
image > edit > caption.
- In wikitext: You can add the image width (in pixels) and caption in the image element (
Lists
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Lists
- Make sure that you add a line break before and after your list.
Links
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Links
Bibliography
- We have used lists in the past to structure bibliographies, using the
*symbol at the start of each line.
Footnotes
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Cite
Quotes
- You can use
<blockquote>Your quote here</blockquote>. Make sure this is separated from the body of your text with line breaks before and after the<blockquote>tags.
Categories
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories
You can create categories or add your page to a category, by adding the following syntax to your page:
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
- Often these category assigners are placed at the bottom of a page.
Skins
The interface of MediaWiki's are called skins.
The default skin that is used on this wiki is Vector, but more skins are installed.
You can change the skin for yourself only, by following these steps:
- Click on Preferences in the right-top corner.
- Click on Appearance.
- Select a skin from the list.
- Click Save.
NOTE: This does not change the skin for everyone. It only changes for your user account.
Other links that can be useful
- Timezone settings of the wiki: under
Preferences > Appearance > Time offset