Wiki Tips

Undo
What do you do when you have covered up the Edit This Page box and you can't get back in to correct the page? You have the Edit tab at the very top of the page next to Talk and History. If you cover up the Save page button at the bottom of the page, click the History tab at the top of the page and click "undo" which appears at the end of the most recent edit.

Finding coding problems
Here is another way to find where coding problems might exist in an article. Type the coding comment tags at the beginning and end of the problem article like so: When you save the page, the page will be blank, but do not panic the coding is still there. Next move the opening comment &lt;!-- tag down the page to maybe the next paragraph and then save. The material above the &lt;!-- will appear again. If there are no problems in the reappeared material, keep moving the &lt;!-- tag down the page and keep saving until the error shows itself. You now know where the problem is. After you have fixed the problem, be sure to remove the comment tags.

Hot Keys
Having a hard time placing your cursor in the exact spot to highlight something to copy and paste? Try this: Place your cursor near the material you want to copy and paste. Then use the right or left arrow keys to get to the place you want to start highlighting. When you arrive at that spot, press the Shift key and then press the arrow key again. As you keep the Shift key depressed and hit the arrow keys, you will notice that it will be begin highlighting letters. Keep pressing the arrow key to highlight all you want to copy. By using the Up and Down arrow keys, you highlight sentences. For a complete list of other hot keys see: http://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/1738-comprehensive-lis… Message Body

More on Hot Keys
Have you ever closed a tab by mistake? It is a pain to have to reopen and find the place you left off. Take heart. Hit the Ctrl and Shift keys along with the letter T key and it will magically reappear. Have you deleted something in the wiki and realized that was a mistake? Take heart again. Hit the Ctrl key along with the letter Z key and it too will magically reappear.

Still more on Hot Keys
Want to magnify the screen you are looking at? Instead of looking for the three lines in the upper right hand corner of the tool bar, clicking on them and then clicking the percentage of magnification, just hold down the Ctrl key and tap the + (plus) sign key above the = (equal) sign. It will enlarge itself. If you want to reduce the screen, hold down the Ctrl key and tap the - (minus) sign next to the 0 key. It will then reduce in size.

Missing Div tags
In the last contributor meeting, Jane Colmenares said that missing  tags were “bane of her existence.” She was referring to the difficulty of finding missing   or   tags in articles that can really mess up a page. It might be for you as well. You can use Ctrl+F to find all the div tags but it will not help you find matching pairs of opening and closing  tags. Here is a suggestion to try that might help you find them a little easier: Download a free software program called Notepad++. It works just like Notepad which comes with your windows program. Put these four lines of code on a new page in Notepad++.

Then save the page with a name you can remember with an “html” extension like so: “some name.html.” You will use it more than once. Next, download the page in Wikitext code you are having problems with between the &lt;body&gt; tags. Then, highlight the  tag you think might have a missing   tag. If its counterpart exists, you will notice that it will be highlighted at the same time. If its counterpart is way down the page, you may have to scroll down the page to find it. If you don’t find one, that is the  tag that is missing its   tag. The same procedure can be used for all tags.

Footnotes or References
Footnotes: Is there a section of an article that you think needs more explanation but do not want to make the section longer? Maybe the explanation would be useful for the new patron, but not the seasoned patron. You can solve this dilemma by creating a footnote. The patron then can click on the footnote icon and go to it. Footnotes are created by using. Place this coding following the place in the sentence or elsewhere where you want to link to the footnote. Then where you want the footnote to appear, install this template:. Footnotes are very useful particular for the new patron. Use them freely.

Don't want talk pages listed
Ever wonder when you are searching on a topic that you get talk pages in the list of responses? Maybe you would like to have items show that do not. Check out your Preferences. See what items you actually have checked to show when you are searching. To get to your preferences, go to your “Personal tools and choose “Preferences.” Then click on “Search options.” The first thing you see on the preference page is Display options. If you want to see more hits per page change it. But under “Advanced options” is where you see what namespaces are displayed when you are searching for information. You can check them all, but maybe you don’t want to see talk pages. If talk pages are check, uncheck them. If you want to see Policy pages, check that. Anyway here is where you can pick and choose what items you want to see when searching the Wiki.

Split Your Screen to see more
Tabs on your browser are nice but they have a problem. If you are trying to follow instructions or paraphrase one article while editing another, going back and forth via the tabs is a pain. If you’re like me you have forgotten what you read by the time the other page comes up. You may already do this but if not try this: split your screen to display both pages at the same time. Call up your browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc.) TWICE and then reduce the size of each image to half the screen and display them side by side. That way you can work on one article while referring to the other at the same time. You can even reduce the width of one article to hide the sidebars, for example, to just include the material you need to refer too, while increasing the size of the other you may be editing. Alone with this I would encourage you all to have multiple monitors. You can get them used in computer repair shops very cheap. Generally, if all you have is a single video card in your computer, it will handle two monitors. If you want more than two monitors like I have, you may have to add an additional video card, but video cards are not expensive either. Besides it is impressive to your friends who may think you cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.

Pasting from the Internet or Word processing program
Have you ever tried to paste some material into the wiki or yammer that was created in Word or some other word processing program only to find that the enlarged text, for example, was still large when you were pasting the material? This is very often the case when pasting material from the internet. To get rid of the formating, first paste it into Notepad++. Notepad++ will remove all the coding and leave only the text. Just paste the material you want to put in the wiki or yammer on a blank Notepad++ page. Then copy and paste that converted material into the article or on yammer.

Image approval
Image Approval. Wondering how to find out if an image is ok to use in our Wiki? Here’s a tip from James Tanner, when you find an image in Google images, click on Search Tools in the tool bar at the top of the page. Then click on “Usage rights” then on “Labeled for reuse.” The images that are left should be ok to use and normally do not have any restrictions on them. We should try to use only images without restrictions.