Getting Your Material Onto Your Members Page

In this section we will introduce the basics of content creation and editing with an emphasis on features of special interest to PHSNE members. The Archive site is implemented with free, open source software which allows members to provide content using a simple built-in editor.

The built-in editor is called a markup editor. That is you type in commands, called the markup language, that instruct the page production software how you want the text to look. Most users will be more familiar with WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editors, e.g typical word processing software. A markup editor is harder to use for most people, but much simpler to implement; so it keeps the software small and easier to maintain. The down side is that a markup editor is different from what many people are used to and you have to preview to see what you will get.

To practice, you can edit the page assigned to you by the Members site administrator. The administrator will have assigned you a password for editing your pages on the site. Initially, your page will also be read protected until you are ready to release it for public viewing.

Terms of Art

Some common technical terms used in the Internet and describing details about web pages and the systems that produce web pages:

CMS	A Content Management System is a software system that allows you to manage the content of the pages on a web site.
Wiki	A specific type of CMS designed for fast, easy, contribution of content to a collection of pages. "Wiki" is for Hawaiian for "fast". This site is a wiki. It uses the pmWiki implementation.
Markup Editor	An editor in which the user indicates the specific formating desired by including "markup" in the text. The markup is interpreted by the software system to produce a page formated as indicated.
URL	A Universal Resource Locator is an address to an page, or other resource, on the WWW. The URL for this page is http://www.phsne.org/archive/index.php/AboutThisSite/EditingBasics. In this case it specifies that the network protocol to access the page is "http", the site domain name is "phsne.org" (the www prefix is just a convention for the World Wide Web). At the phsne.org web server, the page is in the "archive" directory (or folder). "index" is the conventional name for the starting point at a web site or in a directory, and the "php" suffix indicates that the index page is implemented using the php programming language. The index.php program processes the rest of the URL, which for this wiki, specifies that the page desired is the "EditingBasics" page in the group "AboutThisSite".
Link	Another term used to indicate a URL to a specific piece of content. Sometimes called a "hot" link since just clicking on a hot link will take you to the specified content.
PHP	"PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" is a computer language used to dynamically produce web pages. PHP programs output HTML to render web pages in browsers. Thus the pages generally do not exist on the web server until they are requested. At that time the PHP program creates the page on the fly and sends it to the web browser. For example, "index.php" is usually a php program to produce an HTML page on demand.
HTML	Hypertext Markup Language is a markup language that is interpreted by a browser to render a page. The markups inform the browser of the desired layout, text sizes, image placement, ect on the page. If an HTML page is static, then it is stored on the web site server as a file ending with a ".html" extension, and you may see URLs with the names of these static pages in them.

Organization of Site

The wiki is a collection of editable pages. The pages are organized into various groups. Thus there are two levels of naming to specify the location of a specific page — the group name and the page name within that group. Pages may be protected individually and groups of pages can be protected as a group. Thus if you have the group edit password, you can edit any page in the group unless that page has been protected with another password.

This page is "EditingBasics" and is in the "AboutThisSite" group. Note that the group and page name appear at the top of every page.

Page and group protection is under the control of the administrator. At this wiki non-administrative users can not change the authorizations of groups or pages.

Editing

Editable Pages and Passwords

PHSNE site editors can edit the pages in their sections. To start editing a page, just go to it, then click the "Edit" link available at the top and bottom of pages.

A password form will come up to authorize editing privileges for that group of pages or that specific page. Enter the password you were provided. Once you have given a password in an editing session, you generally do not need to enter it again. However passwords will timeout after about a month and need to be re-entered.

Note: You must enable cookies in your browser for "www.phsne.org" or the system will forget that you have recently logged in. If you don't want to enable cookies for all sites, most browsers allow you to enable them only for sites you trust. You should enable cookies for "www.phsne.org".

Editing Form

Once you enter you edit password and are authorized to edit, an editing form will come come up with a scrollable window to enter text and formatting markup for the page.

Brief highlights of entering content, formating and editing is presented below the text entry box, but the site administrator urges you to print the pmWiki Basic Editing documentation page. That page provides examples of the basic markup language for the wiki. Reading that and having a copy at your side when you start your editing will save you a lot of time in getting the answers to basic questions you may have about content formating. Note that you can get a page formated for printing by clicking on the "Print" link at top or bottom of the page.

Edit Buttons

At the top of the edit form are edit buttons. Let your mouse cursor hover over each button for a hint at what it does. If no text is currently selected in the edit box, clicking on a button will drop a template of the matching markup language into the edit box at the cursor.

For example, clicking on the first button "Emphasized" will drop the text "''Emphasized''" at the cursor. The text between the apostrophes will be selected, so if you start typing immediately your new text will appear inside the emphasized markup symbols, and be shown as italics on the web page. Repeating the single quote three times before and after text will result in that text showing as bold on the published page.

Note: The character to mark emphasis is the apostrophe, sometimes called a single quote, repeated twice for italics, not the double-quote character. It can be hard to see the difference on the screen, so if text is not emphasized as you expected, check that you used multiple single quotes.

If text in the edit form is selected when you click the button, it will be enclosed in the markup language corresponding to the formatting specified by the button.

Saving a Draft and Publishing to the Site

Under the text edit window are text boxes to enter a summary description of your edit changes, your name (or initials), and a check box to tag minor edits. The minor edit tag is useful since it is possible to call up the history of edits on a page and not see all of the small changes that were marked as minor. The wiki maintains a history of all changes made to a page over time, so a page editor can return the page to a prior version if desired. At present, the wiki will keep a history for a year.

Note: The wiki requires that you enter an author name before it will publish the page. The error message is easy to miss. If a "Publish" fails, check the "Author" text box to verify you entered your name.

Below the summary and author boxes are some buttons to apply the edits you have made. It is a good idea to use "Preview" to check out your results before saving them to the page. After you click on "Preview" the preview of the page will appear below the edits hints. You will probably have to scroll down the page to see the preview of the page. The preview is very good, but not perfect, so always check the final published page.

If you have extensive edits that you want to continue working on later, you can click "Save as draft". Your edits will be saved for you to return to the next time you edit the page. Or to save edits and continue editing, click on "Save draft and edit". It's a good idea to do this regularly. If you haven't saved a draft or published and your internet connection fails you may loose your editing changes or new content that has been entered.

You save the new content or edits to your page by clicking the "Publish" button. This posts all of your new content and edits to the web page, making it available for viewing.

''Note: You must click the "Publish" button for the changes to be saved and displayed on your site page. No other button on the edit page will do this.

''Note: Do not click the "View" link at the very top of the page. This link will take you back to the page without publishing, or saving, any changes you have made.

Markup Hints

Below the "Publish", ect. buttons are some brief hints to remind you of the basic markup language. Links in this section will lead you to more detailed documentation. The documentation will open in a new window so that you can refer to it while looking at your edit window (provided your screen is large enough!).

Learning the Basic Markup Rules

To learn the basic markup rules see pmWiki Basic Editing. That page provides examples of the basic markup language. It's a good idea to print this page when you are starting out (use the "Print" link at the top of the page and adjust the text size in your browser to your preference). Read through it once, then keep the printout nearby when editing.

Links

You can include links to other web sites and to pages within this wiki. See Basic Editing for instructions. To prevent accidental security problems or links to inappropriate sites, URLs must be approved by the administrator before the site will show a link to them. A message is displayed in place of the link until the link is approved by the administrator.

Tables

The wiki markup language allows you to create tables. See Tables for guidance in creating simple tables.

For more complex table needs, see TableDirectives.

Image URLs to Other Sites

The wiki markup language allows you to include images from other sites. See Image Examples. As with other URLs, image URLs must be approved by the administrator before they will display.

Uploading Documents and Images for Your Page

The wiki markup language allows you to "attach" images to pages. The attached images can be uploaded by you directly to the site and will be displayed on the page, formated as you specify. See Image Examples.

Spell Checking

TDB

Pasting Text From Another Application

TDB

Detailed Documentation

Detailed documentation for the pmWiki CMS in use is available at Documentation Index.

This page & PHSNE publications linked from this page are Copyright © 2006-2012 Photographic Historical Society of New England, Inc. Members' Pages, images, videos and documents copyright � their original creators or assignees.