jan 15, 2007 list of things to add to help

• need to describe use of creating template pages with the title beginning with "Template:[title]" with no spaces around the colon. It's not necessary to begin the title of a template page with "Template:" but it helps reduce typing when including a template name, and it helps organize and find template pages.

• use the opening and closing <tmpl> tags so that only the text within the template tag will be included into another page. that way a user can provide additional info about the template within the template page but not have this additional info included into another article page.

Textile formatting help: quick reference or longer description.

Basic HTML Reference

Play around in the sandbox.

Wiki links

Bracket case: [[text here]]

Bracket case but displaying different text to user: [[Actual title text|displayed title]]

If the article doesn't exist, the bracket case text will be converted to: Text here</strike>

A logged-in user can click on the red text link and will be shown a textarea form to be used for entering content.

If the article does exists, then bracket case will be converted to a web link, pointing to the existing article.

This article is titled Lewiki:Help. If you want to create a link in another article pointing to this help page, type [[Lewiki:Help]]. Since Lewiki:Help already exists, the bracket case will be converted to the link: Lewiki:Help .

Camel Case has been disabled because it's too much of a pain in the ass when typing up a document that contains words in mixed case. It's good enough to use only bracket case.

Bracket case chars

• Alphanumeric plus underscore
• Whitespace
• Dash
• Period
• Vertical bar
• Colon
• Apostrophe

Displayed web links

When mousing over an internal link, the link will become underlined.

External links are always displayed with a dotted or dashed underline.

Meta

Tags

Tags are dynamically-created categories or labels that indentify an article. Tags can be helpful in searching for specific content.

Valid characters for tag names are alphanumerica and underscore. For assigning multiple tags to an article, use tag= on its own line.
Mixed case in tag names won't get converted to wiki links.

tag=tagname
tag=AnotherTagName
tag=test_tag_name

The tag command must start at the beginning of a new line.

To list all tags used:

http://www.toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/lewiki.pl/tags

To list all articles with a specific tag.

http://www.toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/lewiki.pl/tags/art

Boolean tag searching:

http://www.toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/lewiki.pl/tags/art+OR+sports

http://www.toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/lewiki.pl/tags/ohio+AND+politics

Paratags

pt=paratagname ... content begins ...
... and content continues for one or more paragraphs ...
pt..

Content within the paratag statement will be shown with a different background color. Paratags are tags at the paragraph level while tags are used at the page or article level. Not sure of the paratag's use for Lewiki, but I'll list it here just in case. I like the idea of tagging at the paragraph level. Provides for more meta data options. The idea comes from Traction Software's use of what they call "labels." From Traction's website:

The Lewiki code doesn't create a "taxonomy over time" for the tags or paratags at the paragraph level, although it's an interesting concept. Traction has existed since at least 2002, and it's called enterprise blog software. They changed their website recently, and they may now have the most hideous URLs of all-time for their content pages.

Listing all paratag names and searching for articles with specific paratag names is done the same way as with tags above. Replace the word "tags" with "paratags."

The "pt=" and the closing paratag command "pt.." must appear at the start of a line.

The text after pt= can contain alphas, numerics, and underscores.

Friendly URLs

Lewiki attempts to use clean URLs for every function and article. The URLs do not contain questions marks, semicolons, colons, parens, percent signs, equal signs, nor amper signs. The plus sign can be used in the URL for boolean searching.

Underscores are uses in the URL to represent spaces in the article name. The article title appears in the URL to make the URL more intuitive to the user. The title in the URL isn't used to access the article. The article id in the URL is how the article is pulled from the database.

Formatting content

Articles

• Allows for Textile formatting.
• URLs converted to links.
• Table of contents for page created.
• Allows for usage of power commands.

q .
q ..

br .

hr .

tmpl .
tmpl ..

Comments

• URLs converted to links.

May allow Textfile formatting within a comment later.

Power Commands

Used within article content only. Not available for comments.
Each commands must start at the beginning of a new line.

System defaults are in caps.

• comments = YES|no -- Allow commenting on an article.

• showtitle = YES|no -- Display the article's title to user.

• showauthor = yes|NO -- Show the last person who updated the article. For blog postings, the author will be displayed. Currently, only the admin can edit a blog posting. Anyone can edit an article created via the wiki link.

• sidebar = yes|NO -- Show the narrow sidebar on the right side.

• toc = YES|no -- Create a table of contens for the article.

• edit = YES|no -- Allow others to edit the article.

User sign up

User creates a username and password to login with.

User also privides a valid e-mail address. A verification e-mail message will
be sent to user. The e-mail will contain a link to activate the user's account.

RSS

RSS feeds are dynamically created in many areas.

Sort by options:

/cgi-bin/parula.pl/sortby/<sortby option>/rss

• "blogs" - will provide RSS for main site blog postings
• "recentchanges" - list ALL articles by their most recent created or updated date
  for the entire site.
• "id" - list ALL articles by the order they were CREATED.
• "lastcommentdate" - list ALL articles in the order of most recently commented on.
• "commentcount" - list ALL articles in the order of most to least comments.

RSS feed links will be dynamically created for search results, tags, and paratags.

Breadcrumbs

A cookie is used to keep track of the recent articles accessed by the user.

Include templates

A template article can be included into another article by surrounding the

title of the template article with two curly braces.

{{Existing Template Article Title}}

The template will be included into the article at the time the article
is displayed to the user. That way changes to the template will be
seen immediately the next time the article with the include is displayed
to the user.

Article table of contents

By default, a table of contents for the article will be created and included into
the formatted content stored in the database. The TOC will be created based upon
the html heading commands: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6.

Article redirect

To redirect an article to another article, use:

@<article id>

Example: @123

The at sign needs to appear at the beginning of the line of the article you don't
want displayed. The article id follows the at sign. The user will be shown the article
represented by the id number following the at sign.

The article containing the redirect does not need to have its contents deleted.
The user will see text at the top of the page indicating the user was redirected
from another page. If the user has edit privs, the user can edit the page with
the redirect code, in case the redirect wants to be removed.

Locked article for editing

When an article is selected for edit, the lock column in the database for the
article is updated to prevent another user from editing the article.

The lock will remain in affect for 15 minutes. If the user editing the article

wants to keep the article locked longer, the user has to hit the "Preview"
button. The lock is updated to expire in 15 minutes each time the "Preview"
button is clicked.

After an article is updated, the lock is removed.

If an article is selected for edit, but the user changes her mind and moves
elsewhere on the site, the lock remains until the 15 minute expiration is reached.
Even though the user decided not to edit the article, the lock remains. Another
user wanting to access the locked the article will be given a date and time
when the lock will expire. The user will also be shown how many minutes are left
for the lock and the username of the person who started editing the article.

If an article is selected for edit, but the user moves on elsewhere in the site,
the lock remains, but this user can access the article again for edit, since it
was this user who started the lock.

If the user doesn't want to edit an article, the polite thing to do is to click
the "Cancel" button which will turn off the lock.

Searching

Default search is done on the exact phrase of words typed into the search text field box.

Separate words with <b>OR</b> to match on any word, which means the search is a match if at least one word in the list is found in the article.

Use <b>AND</b> to macth on all words , which means all of the words must appear somewhere within the article.

Your search terms can be in upper or lower case, but the <b>OR</b> and <b>AND</b> must be in caps.

• exact phrase: Lake Erie

• match any word: Toledo OR Monroe OR Bowling Green

• match all words: swamp AND river AND lake

Currently, the AND and OR commands cannot be combined.

You can also use the URL to conduct a search.

Example:

http://www.toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/lewiki.pl/search/lathrop

The AND and OR commands be used in the URL too by connecting words with the plus sign:

http://www.toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/lewiki.pl/search/toledo+AND+monroe

"more" tag

For a blog posting, if the posting contains more than one paragraph, only the first paragraph will be displayed on the main page that shows the blog postings. If the posting is more than one paragraph, the read "more" link will be shown, so that the entire article can be viewed.

If a blog posting is more than one paragraph long, and a user wants more than the first paragraph displayed on the blog postings page, use the <b><more></b> tag within the article. All text preceding the "more" tag will be displayed on the blog postings page.

Saving articles

When logged in, the "save" link will appear at the bottom of the article. If you click "save," the article will be saved to your list of favorite articles that you can access via your profile page. A user cannot access another user's list of favorites. On your list of favorite articles page, the "remove" link will appear next to each article, allowing you remove an article from your favorite list.

After clicking "save" at the bottom of an article, the article simply reloads. If you click "save" on an article you have already saved, you will get an error message indicating so.

Embedding images

<p>
This display at the June 2005
Marina District Charette shows the
remediation that has occurred on
the land designated for the project.
</p>

In this example, the image is clickable, so it will display a larger version.

Put the HTML code ahead of the article text that relates to the image.

Here is sample HTML text to include within an article to

• embed an image
• align image on the right side of the article
• include caption text with the image

You will have to provide the "height" and "width" attributes in the tag if you want to resize the image. Otherwise, don't use the attributes.

<br />
<br />
<br />

Code to embed an image:

You can also use "imageleft". If you don't want the image clickable to a larger image, an article, or an external website, leave out the anchor tag.

<div class="imageright"> 
<a href="http://static.flickr.com/22/41484219_be5ad86ca7_o.jpg">
<img border="0" src="http://static.flickr.com/22/41484219_be5ad86ca7_m.jpg">
</a>
&lt;p&gt;
This display at the June 2005
Marina District Charette shows the
remediation that has occurred on
the land designated for the project.
&lt;/p&gt;
</div>

CSS

If you want to highlight some text from another source, surround the text with the following:

<div class="highlighted">

the text

</div>

The text within the "highlighted" div tags will be slightly indented and given a slightly darker bacground color.

To change text size:

<span class="smalltext">your text</span>

<span class="bigtext">your text</span>

Other formatting commands may be created if needed. They are used to make formatting easier. "Divs" are used for paratags of text while "spans" are normally used for a line of text.