Creating your first article
You fancy adding an article on one of the Khaganat wikis? That’s an excellent idea!
Checking that you’re not going to write nonsense
Before anything, check that the article doesn’t already exist, in order to avoid twin pages. It’s better to add a paragraph in an article than to spread information.
But sometimes, it’s better to write a whole new page to broach a specific point than to write endless articles!
Where is this spoken about?
You just have to launch a search using the key-words related to what you want to write about. If you want to add information on the pendos migration, or about the a game server installation, then think of words like “migration”, “pendo”, “server”, “installation”.
Either pages on these subjects already exist (and then, see if it’s more relevant to complete them or to link them to your new page), or there’s nothing at all… Fine, you can start the creation.
Creating, yes, but not anywhere
The wikis are organised according to a given arborescence, and it’s always easier if the page is created at the right place.
Dokuwiki (our wiki engine) has a more specific organisation. The pages are filed in namespaces. Practically, these are folders, and the articles are text files, same as on your personal computer.
Namespaces and categories get sometimes mixed up. They’re not exactly the same thing. An article may belong to several categories, but it will never belong to more than one folder (or namespace). That is what is important when creating your article: place it in the right namespace. As for categories, you’ll see that once your article has been created.
There is one page name which is very special: “start”, which, if created, will be the page of the namespace my_spacename:my_secondary_spacename:start
As for the conventions, write the start of the namespaces as follow:
Title of the section using H1
Short description if useful.
Listing of sub-spaces using the <catlist -noHead -noAddPageButton > tag
Listing of sub-categories (tags) using the {{count>+&namespace1:namespace2}} tag
Categories of the section filled in with tags with the {{tag>tag1}} tag
I’d like to find something better than that…
To know more about the organisation of a dokuwiki, please visit this page.
Creating, at least!
For creating a new page at the right place, go to a page situated in the same namespace, then change the end of the identifying name of your article in the address bar.
The address ends with something that looks like that:
cat1:cat2:example
You remove the word “example” and replace it with the name of your article “myarticle” for example, to get this:
cat1:cat2:myarticle
You’ll then get an empty page, which says that “it doesn’t exist”. You just have to click on “edit” to create your page! Depending on the template, you may have to use the pencil icon on the right-hand bar or the tab on the top of the article.
The names of the pages have to be written in lower case, without accents 1), nor special characters. Letters and figures only! Try to find a name related to the page, but don’t worry if it’s a bit ugly on the syntax level: when articles are listed on a page, what appears is the first title.
If you’ve done a mistake when creating the page (name that doesn’t fit or wrong namespace), don’t panic, it’s easy to solve. Create a new page at the right place (or with the proper name), copy the content of your first article in it, and then delete this one. It will sink into oblivion.
Write according to the guide
Some wiki sections, some pages types, have to follow precise templates for their page layout, so that the whole remains coherent. We try to create templates every time it’s possible, and to write guides about these templates 2).
There are, nonetheless, rules that apply to all pages:
- Put a title at the beginning. It’s always the level 1 title, and the only place in the article where to use this level of title… whose tag looks like that:
====== Level 1 title ======
- Fill in the categories at the end of the article (not before, nor after). It is possible that some articles don’t have a category: add some! The categories are also called tags. You’ve got to add a tag at the end of an article to list the categories to which it belongs.
{{tag>tag1,tag2,tag3}}
The rest requires that you know a bit of the syntax (follow the guide, it’s all written down!3)). Most used layout options appear in the editing bar, you just have to click! Docuwiki makes it a lot easier to learn the syntax, thanks to its integrated editor.
Two important things you’ve got to know : a line break isn’t consideree (you’ll need two of them, and it creates a paragraph), and the spaces at the beginning of the line will appear very differently in your articles. First one is easy to bypass. As for the second one, avoid tabulating, or use bullet points.
