Using Wiki: quick tips

Find something interesting about the wiki? Add your own tip to make everybody's life easier!

If you want to find out more about the wiki, read the wiki:dokuwiki page

If you haven't done so yet, please read the syntax page to find out how to write in Wikian.

• To add a page, simply type a name of the page in double brackets like this: [[pagename]]. This will automatically create a link to a (yet non-existent) wiki page (this is why the name is red and not green); if you follow the link you will see a “This topic does not exist yet” page; all you have to do is click on the “Create this page” button. If you want to practice, visit the playground page.

• To delete a page simply edit it and remove all the text from the edit box. This will “uncreate” the page.

• Several users aren't allowed to edit the same page at the same time. When someone starts editing, the page is locked and if someone else tries to edit, they will receive a message telling them that the page is being edited by someone else. You have 15 minutes to edit a page and if you don't save or preview the page, the lock will expire and someone else will be able to edit the page. If you don't renew your lock, someone else might want to change the page and both of you may try to save 2 different versions of the page. The wiki will tell you that you're trying to edit an older version of the page and will show you the differences.

• Currently, the easiest way to change a user's password is to go into the wiki directory and change the user's hashed password manually. That means you, the user, will have to encrypt the password via László Monda's password encryption tool located here. Password administration is promised to be easier in the next distribution of DokuWiki, but for now try not to lose / change your password too often because it's a hassle both for the admins and for you.

• The signature feature is a very useful tool to let others know what you edited. It's the rightmost toolbox button that looks like this: If you click on it, it will insert your username and the current date like this — Andrey 2005/11/02 23:42 This way everyone can easily identify what's been edited by others, even in the middle of the page.

• Namespaces are very helpful in categorizing things. They form a hierarchy and may sound confusing at first, but in reality are simple. Think of them as of bins or folders (which they actually are on the server). For example, we might have a discussion: namespace or the existing wiki: namespace. Then all the pages wiki:pagename will pertain to wiki and all the discussion:pagename will be discussion pages. We can have a project: namespace to create a bunch of pages about the project. All of these project:pagename pages will be located in the project folder in the wiki pages directory. That's why I said namespaces are like folders. Still confused? see wiki:namespaces

• If at any time you see a red bar at the top of the page saying something like “Writing /AerialImage/public_html/wiki/data/pages/usingwiki.txt.lock failed” please notify one of the admins Andrey, Vlad, or Jay. Please provide us with the page name, the action that resulted in such an error and include all of the lines that are highlighted red

• If you wish, you can subscribe to the Recent Changes RSS feed. An RSS feed is a live bookmark that updates once in a while. If you're using Firefox, you can add this to your bookmark bar to view the recently changed pages.—-

• To change the logo color: In the wiki/lib/tpl/default directory you will find two files: layout.css and style.ini. In layout.css change the value of color: to your predefined value, say __logoblue__

  div.dokuwiki .logo a:link, div.dokuwiki .logo a:visited, div.dokuwiki .logo a:hover, div.dokuwiki .logo a:active {
    color: __logoblue__;
    text-decoration:none;
    font-variant:small-caps;
    letter-spacing:2pt;
  }

  Then in the style.ini file make sure you add a definition for what __logoblue__ is:

  ; This section is used to configure some placeholder values used in
  ; the stylesheets. Changing this file is the simplest method to
  ; give your wiki a new look.
  [replacements]
  __logoblue__  = "#0b77b5"