How to write an article

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To see mediawiki's help article on creating a new page, click here.

The basics

Log In

To create a new wiki page, you must first log in to the wiki using your SRP username and password.

Due to incompatibility in the software that we use to synchronise login credentials between the forum and the wiki, you need to contact gugi or HNSB to get access.

Create a title

Once you are logged in, type this into the browser address bar: straightrazorpalace.com/srpwiki/index.php/New Wiki Page Title where "New Wiki Page Title" is the title you'd like to use. Then press enter and you will be shown the message "There is currently no text in this page, you can search for this page title in other pages or edit this page."

You will get the same result if you type the desired page name into the search field.

Near the top of the page, you will see the following option tabs: Page, Discussion, Create, Watch. Click the "Create" tab, and you will be taken to an edit page where you can write your new page text

Edit the page

Please refer to the Wikipedia entry on how to edit a page. It contains all the information you need to create lists, links, and everything else you need. Please also note that when you edit a page, you will be presented with a formatting bar not unlike the one in the forums. The Wikipedia Cheatsheet has many other useful tips.

Preview the page

At the bottom of the page you're creating will be the options: Save page, Preview, Changes. Click "Preview" to see how your new article will look like once it is saved. If you see anything you need to edit before you save the page to the Wiki, scroll down below the preview and make your changes in the editing area.

Repeat as often as necessary until you are satisfied with your page.

Save it to the Wiki

Click on "Save page" - that is it!

Uploading files

If you want to insert your own file into your new page, upload it to the wiki first and then insert into your page using whatever wiki commands are appropriate. You can also upload 5 files at once.

Advanced topics

Adding an image gallery

Especially when writing a Tutorial, adding images will be useful. You will need to do 2 things:

  1. Upload the images to the Wiki using the Upload page. Remember the name of the image, because you will need it in the next step.
  2. Use code like the following to create the gallery:
<gallery caption="Your caption here." widths="350px" heights="300px" perrow="2">
Image:Illustrated_Guide_to_Fixing_Warped_Scales_-_002.jpg | Image 1
Image:Illustrated_Guide_to_Fixing_Warped_Scales_-_004.jpg | Image 2
Image:Illustrated_Guide_to_Fixing_Warped_Scales_-_005.jpg | Image 3
Image:Illustrated_Guide_to_Fixing_Warped_Scales_-_018.jpg | Image 4
</gallery>

The above code and its components is explained in more detail in the Mediawiki documentation.

<gallery> 
Gives you the framework you need for the gallery.
caption 
Will let you enter a text that goes above the entire gallery.
widths 
Maximum width of images.
heights 
Maximum height of images.
perrow 
How many images will go into one row of the gallery. The image dimensions above with 2 images per row yield a good result without forcing the user to actually click on the images to enlarge them.
Image:... | Image... 
The actual images, whose names you will get once you have uploaded your image. The text after the pipe symbol (|) will be the image caption.

Bulk renaming files

When uploading files to the Wiki, it will make sense to give them meaningful names. However, digital cameras for example will typically name files ABC000012.png or similar. If you want to upload a number of files, it will be useful to rename them according to the topic about which you will write. You might find a utility useful that will let you bulk rename those files. Examples for such utilities for Windows can be found here. Unix users might find ThunarBulkRename or mmv (console) useful.