MILL Wiki Contributor Guide
This Wiki site is powered by MediaWiki, the same software that powers wikipedia and thousands of other websites. MediaWiki provides there own User's Guide which is a comprehansive resource for learning how to navigate, edit and contribute any site powered by MediaWiki, this site included. This page will provide a quick summary of the most important features.
If you are familiar with navigating wikipedia, navigating this site will feel familiar. This site is made up of a network of interlinked pages. Any given page can link to many other pages or have many other pages that link to it. The MILL logo in the top left of the site will be visible on all pages. Clicking the logo will bring you back to the Main Page. Longer pages will have a contents box near the top of the page to help navigate within a given page. A sidebar will appear on the left side of every page. The sidebar contains useful links like “what links here”. Clicking “what links here” from the sidebar of any page will bring up a special page that shows all the other pages that link to the current page. Learn more about navigation by clicking here
Editing
To edit any page you must be logged in to a user account. If you already have an account you can log in by clicking “Log in” in the top right of the page. If you don’t have an account but wish to create one, you can do so by clicking “Create account” in the top right of the page. Once logged in, clicking the “edit” tab in the top right of any page will bring up the editing interface.
Any edits can be typed directly into the editing box. Text can also be typed up on an external word processor and copy pasted into the editing window. If you would only like to edit an individual section of a page you can click "edit" next to the header of the section.
Clicking preview page will allow you to see how the page will look with the new edits. Clicking see changes will display differences between the current version of the page and the edited version. Adding a short summary to an edit like “fixed typo” or “added information on optical microscopy” helps other users track changes more effectively. Once the page is edited and a short summary is written, click “save page” to save the edits.
Learn more about editing pages by clicking here
Formating
MediaWiki provides a lot of tools for formatting text within a page. You can create lists, tables, and bold & italics. The sytax required to make any formatting adjustments is simple to learn. Learn more about formatting options by clicking here
Links and Creating New Pages
Pages and links are the core of this site. It is highly recomended that you read wikimedia's user guide on links and starting new pages to get a complete understanding of how these aspects work. Below will be a breif summary of how to use links and start new pages. There two main types of links you should be concerned with when contributing to this site:
- internal links links to other pages on this site
- external links links to other websites
internal links
interal links, also known as wikilinks use double square brackets [[like this]]. If linking to a page that already exists the link will appear as blue, or purple if you have already visited the page. If creating a link to a new page the link will appear as red. Creating a link is the most common way to start a new page. Clinking on a red link will bring you to a blank editing window to create the new page. When linking to a page you can simply put the name of the page within the double square brackets or if you would like the link to be a string of text that is not necissarily the page title you can use the vertical bar, or pipe character (|) [[name of page|displayed hyperlinked text]]. For example, if you would like to link to the list of equipment you can put the link directly on the word equipment or you could use a sentence like: "to see a list of our equipment click here". Addtionally you can link to a specific section within a page by using a the name of the page you want to link to follwed by a "#" and the name of the section you would link to link to [[Page name#section name]]. When using links the first leter of the page name is not case sensitive but very subsequent leter is case sensitive. [[main Page]] is equivalent to [[Main Page]] but [[Main page]] is not equivalent. Learn more about interal links by clicking here.
External Links
External links link to other websites. To create an external link use the url of the page you'd like to link to followed by the words displyed on the page as the link between single brakets. [http://www.examplewebsite.com words displayed as the link]. You can create a link to an email adress by using single brackets and the prefix mailto: followed by the email you would like to link to and the words to be displayed on the page as the link [mailto:email@mail.com words displayed as link]. Learn more about external links by clicking here
Images
Images there own syntax within media wiki for sizing and formatting. To use an image on this site, the image must first be uploaded to the site’s files. You must be logged into an account to upload images. You can check the images already in the sites files by clicking upload file and then clicking list of uploaded files. If you want to upload a new file click “Choose File” within the source file box and select a file from your computer. The file can be up to 100mb large and be one of the permitted file types (png, gif, jpg, jpeg, webp). Add a brief summary of the image and then click “Upload file” at the bottom of the page. Once the desired file is uploaded you can use the image within a page by using [[File:filename.extension|parameters|caption]]. There are many things that can go into an image’s options. An image's size, placement within the page, and format can all be controlled using various parameters. Separate parameters with pipe characters to control multiple options within an image. For a full list of size, alignment, and format options click here here