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'''Editing a wiki is easy!''' Just type it in like an email, and click save when you're done. You don't need to worry about the advanced features straight away.
'''Editing a wiki is easy!''' Just type it in like an email, and click save when you're done. You don't need to worry about the advanced features straight away.


If you want to do more, then read the page below for info on formatting. And you can always [http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Appropedia_talk:Village_pump&action=edit&section=new drop us a line] and the community can help format it for you.  
If you want to do more, then read the page below for info on formatting. And you can always [http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Appropedia_talk:Village_pump&action=edit&section=new drop us a line] and the community can help format it for you.


== Creating a new page ==
== Creating a new page ==

Revision as of 03:57, 5 May 2017

Template:Lang

Search help pages

Search for Help and/or Appropedia administrative pages


See also this list of all Help pages.

Start simple!

Editing a wiki is easy! Just type it in like an email, and click save when you're done. You don't need to worry about the advanced features straight away.

If you want to do more, then read the page below for info on formatting. And you can always drop us a line and the community can help format it for you.

Creating a new page

The quickest way to create a new page is to perform a search for the new title with the Go button. When the search finds nothing, click on the red link "create this page".

Naming conventions

The name is case-sensitive, except for the first letter, which is automatically made upper-case. Don't capitalize all words, except for proper names, e.g. we use Natural paint basics, not Natural Paint Basics.

Remember to give your page a name that tells people at a glance what it's about. e.g. either "Smithville Local Exchange Trading System" or "SLETS (Smithville Local Exchange Trading System)" or "Smithville local currency scheme" - any of these is much better than just "SLETS".

For guidelines on naming projects and other types of pages, see Help:Page naming.

Formatting

You can format your text using wiki markup. The easiest way to do this is to select the text, then use the formatting bar above the edit box - click B for bold, for example. To see what a button does, hover you mouse over it and hover text should appear, explaining the button. However you can put the formatting in yourself as well, if you wish.

Wiki markup consists of normal characters like asterisks, single quotes or equation marks which have a special function in the wiki, sometimes depending on their position. For example, to format a word in italic, you include it in two single quotes like ''this''

Formatting Marks

Description You type You get
applies anywhere
Italify text ''italic'' italic
Bold text '''bold''' bold
Bold and italic '''''bold & italic''''' bold & italic
Big <big>BIG</big> BIG
Small <small>small</small> small
Colored text (choose a color.) <font color="lime">colored text</font> colored text
Escape wiki markup <nowiki>no ''markup''</nowiki> no ''markup''
Signature (use this to sign comments) ~~~~ Username Time, Date (Zone)
only at the beginning of the line
Headings

of different sizes

==level 1==
===level 2===
====level 3====
=====level 4=====

Level 1


Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Horizontal rule (use sparingly)

----


Bullet list


* one
* two
* three

  • one
  • two
  • three
Numbered list


# one
# two
# three

  1. one
  2. two
  3. three
Definition list


;Definition
:item 1
:item 2

Definition
item 1
item 2
Preformatted text

  a space at the
  beginning of the line
  creates
  preformatted text

a space at the 
beginning of the line 
creates 
preformatted text
Tables
{|border="1"
| 1 || 2
|-
| 3 || 4
|}
One Two
Three Four

Internal links (wikilinks)

Description You type You get
Internal link [[Page]] Page
Piped link [[Page|different text]] different text

Here are some variations of two important types of links in Appropedia: internal links to other pages in the wiki - including files (such as pictures) and external links to other websites.

To add an internal link, enclose the name of the page you want to link to in double square brackets. When you save the page, you'll see the new link pointing to your page. If the page exists already, it is displayed in blue, empty pages are displayed in red.

The first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link has the same effect as typing a space, but is not recommended).

Help:Redlinks

External links

Description You type You get
External link http://mediawiki.org http://mediawiki.org
External link,

different title

[http://mediawiki.org MediaWiki] MediaWiki
External link,

unnamed

[http://mediawiki.org] [1]
Interwiki link

for Wikipedia & various other wikis

[[Wikipedia:Sanitation]]

[[Greenlivingpedia:Green computing]]

Greenlivingpedia:Green computing
Wikipedia

superscript
link

{{w|target pagename}}, e.g.:

Lira{{w|Lira, Uganda}}

LiraW

External links are in the form [http://www.example.org link name] (resulting in link name), with the link name separated from the URL by a space. Links without link names will be numbered: [http://www.example.org] becomes [1]. Links with no square brackets will be displayed in their entirety: http://www.example.org .

HTML

Some HTML-Tags are allowed in Appropedia, for example <code>, <div>, <span> and <font>.

Files

Appropedia strongly encourages the use of supporting media to make articles more informative. Media that supports multilingual learning is also encouraged. Following are some instructions and guidelines on including media in your page.

Uploading

Before uploading, please ensure that you have rights to upload and redistribute the file(s) in question and that you in turn grant these rights to others.

  1. Save a file on your computer and remember where, i.e. what folder.
    • Make sure to give it a unique name, such as your projectname_description.jpg
    • For photos: Save the photo with no dimension greater than 800 pixels, and do less if big is not necessary
    • For photos: Save the photo rotated in the proper orientation
    • For powerpoints with slideshare follow these instructions: http://help.slideshare.com/forums/67665-faq-embedding-sharing
  2. In Appropedia, click the "Upload a file" link located in the "toolbox" menu on the left
  3. Click the "Browse..." button in the "Upload file" page, and browse to the file you saved
  4. Choose the file
    • This will fill the Source and Destination Name of that file into the corresponding text fields.
  5. Enter a summary. (this step is optional but considerate)
    • This summary section is a great place to indicate why you have rights to post the file
  6. Then press the "Upload file" button to finish the upload. This may take some time if you have a slow internet connection.

The preferred formats are JPEG for photographic images, PNG for drawings and other iconic images, and OGG for sounds. Please name your files descriptively to avoid confusion.

Please note that as with wiki pages, others may edit your uploads (and admins may delete them) if they think it serves the project, and you may be blocked from uploading if you abuse the system.

Once your file is uploaded you will probably want to put it in your page.

Avoid huge image files

Huge image files should be avoided - it puts a load on the servers and can make pages load slowly (especially in remote or underdeveloped areas). Usually the file should be compressed to 1 MB or less (3 MB or less for a very large or detailed picture). Raw photos from digital cameras can be more than 5 MB, which is often unnecessarily large.

An image editing tool can help you make it smaller. An excellent free program for Windows users is Faststone.Here are some instructions for the mac and an online image converter (max image size 3MB).

Putting in an image

Main articles: Help:Images and Help:Add image tutorial.

To put your picture (file) in your page, you link to it by placing double brackets around the name of the file page (as if it was another Appropedia page). For instance if you just uploaded a file named AEFprevfilt2.jpg, you would put double brackets around image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg.

Description You type You get
Just the picture [[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg]] AEFprevfilt2.jpg
Thumbnailed [[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg|thumb]]
AEFprevfilt2.jpg
Thumbnailed with caption [[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg|thumb|Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter]]
Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter
Thumbnailed with
caption and location
[[Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg|thumb|left|Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter]]
Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter
Gallery {{gallery
|width=180
|height=135
|lines=2
|Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg|Fig 1: Cleaning out the old filter
|Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg|Fig 1a: This would be cooler as a different photo
|Image:AEFprevfilt2.jpg|Fig 1b: This would be cooler as a different different photo
}}


See also Help:Add image tutorial, and a much more detailed page at wikipedia:Wikipedia:Picture tutorial, with many options.

Putting in a video

Categories

To add a page to a category, type [[Category:Name of category]] at the bottom of the page.

Categories on Appropedia are used to organize content. For instance if there are many individual articles on the topic of water, it might make sense to create a category for water.

To Create a category called Water type http://appropedia.org/Category:Water into the address bar

To make a link to the Water category (a visible link, rather than adding the page to that category) type [[:Category:Water]] . If you want the link to display with different text, type [[:Category:Water | LINKTEXT]] where LINKTEXT is the text that will be displayed as the link.

To see a category tree see Appropedia:CategoryTree. It is helpful to have the category tree open in another tab when editing a page and deciding the most appropriate categories.

Status tagging

For project pages it is important to note the status. Often the investment cost of recreating or building an appropriate technology is high. To overcome this cost, first, there must be adequate information and schematics for a user to trust that there is due diligence in a given design and that the designed device can perform to specifications. Second, there must be a successful history of implementation before an investment in time and resources to employ an innovation can be made. By following the instructions on the page Appropedia:Status, the status of a particular appropriate technology can be shown easily to help users decide on the use of a technology.

See Appropedia:Status for details.

AppropediaFox

Appropediafox.pngAppropediaFox is a free and open source Firefox plugin that helps make editing Appropedia fast and easy.

More info

See Category:Appropedia help for other specific help topics. See also Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Wikipedia:Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia.

If you have a technical question which is not answered here, you may wish to check the help pages on Wikipedia (as Appropedia and Wikipedia use the same software); or please ask at the Technical questions page or the Village pump - we'll be glad to help!

External links

Guides

Tutorials

How to use Appropedia
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