Help:New editors

All members of the forum at simplemachines.org can edit this wiki, as long as you have made at least ten posts. Do not worry about making mistakes as it is easy to reverse changes if necessary, and everything is logged in the history of each page.

We strong recommend discussing your ideas with others in the Doc Helpers board on the SMF forum before making any changes to a wiki page.

Wiki Basics

• When editing the wiki, please follow the Documentation Guidelines.
• Instead of having a topic and replies, the wiki has articles and versions.
• When you use Edit, you are creating a new version. The older versions never get changed.
• You can always see the older versions using the History button. You can even compare versions.
• Do not worry about editing "at the same time" as somebody else. The wiki will warn you if someone else has edited the same article while you were working, and give you a chance to merge your changes.
• If a wiki page has translated versions (you will see a list of languages at the top of the page), please discuss any substantial changes in the Doc Helpers board. This is because we try to keep these pages as stable as possible to make life easier for the translators. On the other hand, if you just want to make small corrections to the grammar and spelling, then you do not have to discuss this because it will not affect the translations.
• Please do not create new pages with ? or & in the title -- they confuse the webserver.

Searching for an Article, or for Help Writing Articles

Just type something into the search box, and click the search button. If you start at one of the SMF manual content pages, like the Main Page, the results will usually be limited to the content pages. So if you are looking for something in another "namespace", such as help or the "how-to" pages for people working on the online manual, you can use one of the links that you will see when you land on the search page. "Everything" will make sure you do not leave anything out.

Editing an Existing Article

If you can see the Edit button above an article, you have permission to edit it. During editing, you will find the following features:

• Wiki editing buttons (Bold, Italic, Underline, External Link, Level 2 Heading, Picture, File, Math, <nowiki>, signature, and horizontal line) above the editing box.
• The editing box, where you type the article.
• The Summary box, where you briefly explain your changes.
• The Editing help link below the editing box for more information on wiki formatting.
• 'Show changes to compare your new version to the previous one.
• Show preview to see how your version is progressing.
• Save page to save your new version.

Starting a New Article

• Type the new article title into the wiki search box, and hit the Go button. If an article with that title does not already exist, the wiki will offer up a red link to create that article. Follow that red link and get started on the new article.
• While working on another article, create a wikilink to the new wiki article. The next time you preview or save, you will see a red link to that new article. Follow that red link and get started on the new article.

Wikilinks and Wiki Formatting

BBCode cannot be used for formatting wiki articles. You will need to familiarise yourself with wiki code. One really helpful wiki formatting feature is the automatic table of contents. Every time you use a == to make a heading, it gets added to the table of contents. You can find more information about links and formatting when you follow the Editing help link at the bottom of every editing page.

Some things that work anywhere on the page:

• A wikilink -- a link within the wiki: [[Name of article]]; see also Links
• An external link -- a link to some place else [http://simplemachines.org]
• ''italic'', '''bold''', and '''''bold italic''''' text
• Pictures [[File:Yes_check.png|thumb]], but only if they are already on the wiki.
• Upload pictures to the wiki

Some things that only work at the start of a line:

• Section headings -- == Level 2 ==, ===Level 3===, etc. Please do not use Level 1 headings.
• Lists. Just start the line with a '*' to create a bullet, '#' to create a number, and double them up '**' to create indented lists.

Images on the wiki

All images used in the wiki must be found on the wiki. See Images for further information.

A new picture

Here is how to upload a new picture to the wiki:

• On the left side of the wiki page, under Toolbox, find the upload file link, and follow the directions.

Updating an existing picture

• While viewing the picture on a page, click on it.
• On the image page, find the Upload a new version of this file link.
• Follow the instructions to upload a new file from your desktop. The new file must have the same file extension as the old one.