Wiki Markup Tutorial

Here is a cheat sheet for wiki markup. If any other quick help is useful, please mention it in the discussion tab. More extensive information can be found on the MediaWiki help pages. We also have some video tutorials posted here from YouTube. Wikipedia also has a good introduction to using MediaWiki. There is a categorizing page that discusses our system of page categories.

Templates

Each page should be assigned a template, by inserting at the top of text, a keyword surrounded by double curly brackets, like so:

{{effort}}

There are Content Templates and Formatting Templates that you can use.

Text

To change text use the following markup:

Bold = '''text'''
Italic = ''text''

Links to other pages

You can create a link to any other wiki page by using the following syntax:

[[PageName|the text that appears as the link]]

the above text would create a link that looks like this: the text that appears as the link

It is good practice to create a link, and then follow the link to create a new page, so that every page has at least one link leading to it.

Goals	Markup Syntax	Resulting Link
Link to another wiki page - just surround the page name by double brackets	[[pagename]]	pagename
Link to another wiki page, but use text other than the page name - follow the page name with the text that will be seen	[[pagename\|text]]	text
Link to a category page - requires use of a colon before the category name	[[:category:name]]	category:name
Link to another webpage	http://www.salishsearestoration.org	http://www.salishsearestoration.org
Link to another page using text - surround with single brackets, and include the text after a space	[http://www.salishsea.info text]	text

Section Headings

By adding equals signs, you can turn text into a section heading. MediaWiki uses a outline heading system, and looks in a document and identifies headings to create a table of contents for a page.

Heading Level 1:   =HeadingName=
Heading Level 2:   ==HeadingName==

And so on...

Images

To embed an image you need to either upload the image or have a static web-based repository and know how to use it(picasaweb or flickr or otherwise.) For on-wiki images use the following syntax:

[[file:imagename.jpg|400px|right|this is a caption]]

substituting the appropriate file name, indicating the display image width, omiting the positioning if you want it inline with text, and adding a caption as you see fit. You don't need to include any of those parameters if you don't want, nor does the order matter. You can turn an image into a link by adding the following code to your image markup:

[[file:imagename.jpg|400px|right|link=PageName|this is a caption]]

Files

You can link to a file that is uploaded in the wiki using the following code:

[[file:FileName.pdf|link text]]

Video

We have some code installed that allows you to embedd video in a wiki page. The code is simplest for YouTube and the markup looks like this, (with your YouTube video ID substituted for the text string):

{{#ev:youtube|k8qoIrA-EaM|width=800}}

Redirect

A wiki page may have no other purpose than to take you to another page. If you follow a link to a page with a redirect, you won't stop there, but will get passed to another page. The page text of a redirect page looks like this:

#REDIRECT[[TargetPageName]]

Here are the reasons we use redirect pages:

If you move a page, the old page name is kept, and traffic is redirected. This way deleting a page doesn't result in broken links.
If you merge two pages, the unused page name can redirect to the final page name.
If you create an abbreviated page name, as with a document citation. For example the link [[Breslow 2001]] redirects to [[File:Breslow 2001 farmer perception of salmon recovery.pdf]].
If you want similar words to go to the same page (page names are case sensitive!). For example River delta, River Delta, delta, deltas, Deltas and river deltas all point to [[:category:river delta]].