Help:Contents
From Tacoma Biodiesel
The Tacoma Biodiesel site is a wiki, a collaborative website allowing visitors to read, author, and modify the data on the site. This article contains guidance on the use of the site.
Contents |
Reading the Site
If you are here to read the contents of the site, you don't have to do anything special. Navigating the Tacoma Biodiesel web site is the same as navigating any other web site. Just read the text and follow any links that are interesting to you. Links are shown in underlined blue, and can be followed just like any other web link. Note that underlined red designates pages that will be added in the future but have not been created yet.
Editing the Site
The only requirement we have for editing the Tacoma Biodiesel site is that you create a user account and be logged in. The following section should help you get started.
Creating a User Account
Creating a user account is easy. Click the link in the top right labeled "Create an account or log in". Choose a username and password, and fill out the lower section as desired to confirm you information. Click the create account button to complete your registration, and you will be ready to go!
Signing In To Your User Account
If you already have a user account, but your computer does not show that you are logged in, click "Create an account or log in" link and enter your username and password. Once you are logged in your username should appear near the top, righthand portion of your screen.
Editing a Page
To edit a page, click the "Edit" tab appearing at the top of its content pane. A page will be loaded that contains an editable text window in which you can edit the existing contents of the page.
MediaWiki supports HTML tags for rendering page text, but it is preferred that you use MediaWiki-style tags when possible. For more information on editing pages, please visit the Help:Editing page.
Creating a New Page
To create a page, it is suggested that you first create a link in a logical location on an existing page. This will create an underlined red link on that page, denoting a link to a page that does not yet exist. Clicking on that link will bring up the editing dialog for you new page, where you can create its initial content.
Additional Functionality
MediaWiki offers some additional functionality that registered users can take advantage of.
Preferences
Clicking the preferences link at the top of the page allows you to:
- Modify your display name, email address, password
- Configure e-mail notifications
- Choose a different "skin" for how the pages will display in your browser
- Set up your time zone preferences
- etc.
Watchlist
Your watchlist allows you to keep close track of changes to specific pages within the site.
You can add a page to your watchlist by clicking the "watch" tab at the top of the content pane.
Visiting your watchlist (link in upper right) will show the most recent time that each watched page was modified. Additionally the recent changes page will show pages on your watchlist in a bold typeface for easy recognition.
Discussion/Talk Pages
Every article in the wiki includes its own Talk page, wherein you can make comments or raise questions about an article without actually modifying it. You can access this page by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of the content pane. Note that if an article is in your watchlist, its talk page will also be in your watchlist.
It is a good idea to "sign" additions to the talk page. To automagically do this, merely add " - ~~~~" to the end of your comment, which will put a dash followed by your name and time of comment.
For More Information
More information on using this and other wiki sites can be found at the MediaWiki help page.
