» Project Kenai Documentation and Training    » How Do I ...

About Wikis

The project wiki is typically where a project and its processes are documented by project members who have permission to edit and add pages. Usually everyone, even nonmembers, can read a project's wiki pages and get some idea of what the project is about. A project administrator can add a wiki to the project and manage it as described at Managing Projects: Wiki.

Using a Wiki

If you open a project's home page and click » Wiki on the right, you see the wiki's home page and can read it.

If you have permission as a project member, you can edit pages and add new ones. To edit pages, see all the pages, upload images, or create a new page, open a wiki page and click one of the links on the left in the blue navigation area under Wiki Controls.

Editing a Wiki Page

1. If necessary, open the project's wiki home page as described above.
2. To open an existing page, either select a page in the Jump to Page droplist or click List all Pages in the left blue navigation area. To create a new page, enter a new page name under Create New Page and press GO to open the editor for the new page.
   
   
   
   
3. If you opened an existing page, click the Edit Page link in the left blue navigation area. The wiki editing page opens.
   
   
   
   
4. You can resize the space for the editing area in two ways:
   • Pull down the bar at the bottom of the edit window to get more vertical space.
     
     
     
   • Click anywhere in the border between the editing area and the left navbar to get more horizontal space.
     
     
     
     
5. Enter MediaWiki or HTML code in the edit area.
6. For quick help, see the Wiki Syntax Quick Reference table at the bottom of the edit area, below the Save and Preview buttons.
7. Click the Preview button to see if your code works.
   Note: The Preview window also has a bar at the bottom that you can pull down for more vertical space.
8. Before saving, optionally enter a comment about the edit in the Revision Comment field.
9. Click the Save button to save your changes.

Renaming a Wiki Page

You can't directly rename a wiki page, but you can copy the current page's contents to a new page, and then delete the old one. Here's how you do it.

1. Open the existing page in the wiki editor, as described above, and copy all the contents.
2. In the right navbar click the Create New Page field, enter the name of the new page, and click GO.
   
3. Paste the contents of the old page into the new one, then click Save.
4. Delete the old page, as described below.

Deleting a Wiki Page

1. In the left navbar (see figure above), choose List All Pages.
2. Scroll through the alphabetical list of pages and find the wiki page you want to delete. If you have permission to delete pages, you'll see Delete Page to the right of the page name.
   
   
3. Click Delete Page, then confirm the deletion in the dialog.
   
   

Uploading a Graphics File for a Wiki

To upload an image to be used in a wiki page:

1. If necessary, open the project's wiki home page as described above.
2. With a wiki page open, click Manage Images in the left navigation area to open the Manage Images page.
   
   
   
   
3. In the Manage Images page, Click Add Image File.
   
   
   
   
4. The Upload Image dialog box opens.
   
   
   
   
5. Click Browse and navigate to the image file, then optionally enter comments describing the file.
6. Click Upload Image to upload the file.
7. A message appears above the Image Upload area. If the upload succeeds, you see the message in the figure below. If it fails, you see an error message instead.
   
   
   
   

Managing a Wiki

If you are a project owner or administrator, you can add or delete a project wiki, change its display name, description, and default home page, and set who has access to it for reading, editing, and creating and deleting pages. See Managing Projects: Wiki.

Wiki Formatting

You can format your text using wiki markup, which uses normal characters like asterisks, single quotes, and equals signs that have a special function in the wiki, sometimes depending on their position. For example, to format a word in italic, you surround it with two single quotes like ''this''.

Wiki Markup

In addition to using the wiki markup tags described below, you can use most HTML tags. If you do use HTML, you might want to Preview your pages to make sure the tags work. One HTML tag that does not work is the <body> tag. Anything enclosed in this tag will not display.

Note: In addition to the examples in the wiki markup table below, there are wiki markup samples at MediaWiki Sampler.

Apply Anywhere
Description		You type		You get
Italic text		''italic''		italic
Bold text		'''bold'''		bold
Bold and italic		'''''bold & italic'''''		bold & italic
Hyperlink to wiki page		[[Home]		Home
Hyperlink to wiki page with different link text—use | to separate text		[[Home|Main doc page]]		Main doc page
Hyperlink to external web page		[http://www.oracle.com]		http://www.oracle.com
Hyperlink to external web page with different link text—space separates text		[http://www.oracle.com Oracle]		Oracle
Parameterized link to this project's project page		<a href="{{project}}">this project's project page</a>		this project's project page
Parameterized link to this project's forums		<a href="{{forums}}">this project's forums</a>		this project's forums
Parameterized link to the list of all projects		<a href="{{projects}}">all projects</a>		all projects
Parameterized link to project Help		<a href="{{project help}}">Help project</a>		Help project
Parameterized link to project Help's wiki home page		<a href="{{project help page Home}}">Project Help's wiki home page</a>		Project Help's wiki home page
Anchor definition. Use the id attribute with an HTML tag that takes this attribute, such as <span> or <div>.		<span id="anchor_to_link_to">optional text</span>		optional text
Hyperlink to anchor		[[#anchor_to_link_to|go to anchor]]		go to anchor
Inline image. Use | to separate options, which include: thumb for an 80x80 pixel thumbnail 99px to size the image to 99 by 99 pixels square 66x99px to size the image to 66px wide by 99px high left or right to float the image left or right block to use a horizontal scrollbar with an image that is wider than the screen For more sample code, see Images in the MediaWiki Sampler page.		[[image:aracari-sm.png]]
Inline image with thumb, and right parameters.		[[image:aracari.png|thumb|right]]
Escape wiki markup		<nowiki>no ''markup''</nowiki>		no ''markup''
Table of Contents: Use two underscores before TOC and two after. The table of contents is inserted at the location of this identifier and lists all headings defined with wiki heading tags (=, ==, ===, and so on). If you want to exclude a heading, such as the main heading, use HTML tags instead of wiki tags. For example, <h1>Main Heading</h1>.		__TOC__		Contents 1 Using a Wiki 1.1 Editing a Wiki Page 1.2 Renaming a Wiki Page 1.3 Deleting a Wiki Page 1.4 Uploading a Graphics File for a Wiki 2 Managing a Wiki 3 Wiki Formatting 4 Wiki Markup
Apply Only at Beginning of Line
Description		You type		You get
Indented text		:Indented text		Indented text
Headings of various levels		=level 1=		Level 1
		==level 2==		Level 2
		===level 3===		Level 3
		====level 4====		Level 4
Horizontal rule		----
Bulleted list		* first item * second item ** first sub-item ** second sub-item *** first sub-sub-item *** second sub-sub-item		first item second item first sub-item second sub-item first sub-sub-item second sub-sub-item
Numbered list		# Step 1 # Step 2<br />more on two<br />yet more on two # Step 3 ## Sub-step 1 ## Sub-step 2		Step 1 Step 2 more on two yet more on two Step 3 Sub-step 1 Sub-step 2
Mixture of bulleted and numbered lists		# Step 1 # Step 2 #* Sub-item #* Sub-item * Bullet 1 * Bullet 2 *# Sub-step 1 *# Sub-step 2		Step 1 Step 2 Sub-item Sub-item Bullet 1 Bullet 2 Sub-step 1 Sub-step 2
Definition list		;Term :Definition 1 :Definition 2		Term Definition 1 Definition 2
Preformatted text For information on code formattting using the <pre name="language-name"> syntax to format php, Java, CSS, and Ruby code samples, see Source Code Formatting.		preformatted text re-  quires a space at the  beginning of each line		preformatted text re- quires a space at the beginning of each line
A table with borders, a header row, a simple row, and a row with the valign attribute defined.		{|- border="1" ! Heading 1 ! Heading 2 |- | cell 1 | cell 2 |- valign="top" | single line | two lines<br />of content |}		Heading 1 Heading 2 cell 1 cell 2 single line two lines of content