Help:Contents

=Welcome to Antiquist Wiki Help=

For reference, the software that runs this Wiki us called MediaWiki which is the same engine that runs Wikipedia. The MediaWiki User Help pages will undoubtedly come in handy.

There's also a handy guide at over at Wikia.

Fear not! Below is a guide to the basics.

Adding a new page
There are several ways to create a new page using the Antiquist Wiki. The golden rule is to first use the search tool to see if a page already exists before you create one.

From the search engine
The simplest way of creating a new page is to perform a search, and if no page exists for your topic, the search results page will offer you the chance to create one for the topic you searched upon.

From the URI (web address)
If you would like to write a new page about a new topic, and you know a page does not already exist, you can edit the URI (the web address) in the address bar of your web browser. The address of the main page looks like: http://www.antiquist.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

If you wanted, for example, to create a new page called "Test Page", you could edit the address to something like: http://www.antiquist.org/wiki/index.php?title=Test_Page

The Wiki will tell you that:

"There is currently no text in this page, you can search for this page title in other pages or edit this page.".

Follow the "edit this page" link. When you've finished, click the "Save page" button at the bottom of the page and you're done! The page is then saved, and people will be able to view and further edit that content. It will show up in the search engine, and you can link to it from other pages.

Remember that this all runs on a Linux system, and so URLs are case sensitive. "test_page" is different from "Test_Page", for example.

Adding content to a page
MediaWiki (the software that runs this Wiki) uses simple syntax to format the text.

Links
To see how to make various kinds of links click here

Bullet lists
To make a bullet point list like this:


 * Item 1
 * Item 2
 * Item 3

..you only need to prefix the list items with an asterix, putting each item on a new line.

e.g. to get a list like the above:


 * Item 1


 * Item 2


 * Item 3

Searching
Type your query in the box on the left. Click "Go" if you want to look for a page whose title matches your word or phrase. Click "Search" if you want to search both page titles, and within the text of all pages.

Adding images
Adding an image is quite simple, and can liven up a page.


 * To add an image, log in to the Wiki, and click the "Upload file file" link in the Toolbox (it's on the lower left of this page). Click the "Choose file" button, and select the image you wish to upload. Images should be in the JPG, GIF, or PNG format.
 * Then type a description of the image in the description box. Remember copyright issues!
 * Click the "Upload File" button, and your image will be copied onto the system. Note that the title of the image is the file name (e.g. polystyrene-trilithons.JPG).
 * If the image is larger than 100Kb, it might ask you if you would like to proceed - click the "Save File" button if you are asked this.
 * Your image will be displayed on a page, with the file name at the top of the page prefixed with "Image:" - this is actually the code you need to use the image - if you're going to use it right away, select the text (e.g. "Image:polystyrene-trilithons.JPG"), and copy it.

You can then go to a page and edit it to insert the image (or create a new one if you like). The syntax to use an image is as follows:

image name | option to make a smaller version | size of the smaller version in pixels | alignment | caption

e.g.



This is the code used to display the image we uploaded in the above example, create a "thumbnail" version 150 pixels wide, align it on the right, and give it the caption "Polystyrene trilithons".

Your Wiki Homepage
By clicking on your username in the top of the screen on the left you can go to your user page. Here you can maintain personal links, tips whatever you like!