or Help! the Wiki gives me the Willies!

Relax. The wiki is mostly harmless. And it would be very difficult for you to harm the wiki. If you are an SMF forum member in good standing, you can edit almost any document. If you haven't already, please join the Doc Helpers group (join from the Group Membership page of your profile) and bring your question on over to the Doc Helpers board on the SMF forum.

Wiki Basics

• 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.
• Every forum member in good standing can edit almost any wiki article.
• We ask that you not edit articles that are being translated
• Please follow the Documentation Guidelines
• And please do not create new articles with ? or & in the title -- they confuse

Editing an existing article

If you can see the Edit button above an article, you have permission to edit it. Only -- please ask first before editing articles that are in translation (you'll see the translation notice at the top). During editing, look for

• 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 last one
• Show preview to see how your version is coming along
• 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 a 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

Wiki formatting is just like BBC formatting, only completely different. One really nice 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'll find more 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]]
• 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.