Helpful Hints on How to Use a Wiki

Perhaps you have never, ever worked with a wiki before, so you are tentative about becoming a "provider" to the GoodNanoGuide because you are afraid of making a mistake, which will destroy everything. Don't worry; it's not going to happen, because on this page we reveal all the 'secrets' of how you gain mastery of the wiki.

Helpful Hint 1: History and Rollbacks
Helpful Hint 2: How to Edit
Helpful Hint 3: The WYSIWYG Editor
Helpful Hint 4: Practice in the Sandbox
Helpful Hint 5: Internal and External Page Links
Helpful Hint 6: How to Create a New Page
Helpful Hint 7: How to Preview and Save Edits
Helpful Hint 8: The Normal Editor


Helpful Hint 1: You cannot accidentally destroy someone else's hard work because a wiki keeps a history of each page every created. Once you become a Provider, you will see a tab at the bottom of each page that's call "History." Click on that tab and you will have access to every version of that page that has ever been created. So if you make a mistake, you (or we) can simply rollback to an earlier version of the same page.

Helpful Hint 2: To edit a page, simply go to that page and hit the edit button. You will find that button on the top right-hand side of the page - disguised as this image - - or at the bottom of the page, where it's not disguised at all.

Helpful Hint 3: It's easy to edit a page using the GNG's "wysiwyg editor" (i.e., what you see is what you get). It's not that different from your regular word processing program, just not as robust. We suggest that you start off simple - stick to right or center formatting; use outlining only when necessary; and bold, italicize, and ==underline== only when you want to highlight a point. If you would rather practice before you start adding substance to the GNG, look for the Sandbox to play in (see Helpful Hint 4).

There is also a "normal editor" option. See Helpful Hint 7 for a discussion about how that works.

Helpful Hint 4: When you become an Expert Provider, you will see a new My Tools Menu in the left hand column and a link there to a Sandbox. The Sandbox is a place where you can practice your skills adding information to the GNG. Don't worry, the Sandbox maintains no history of who has been there and cleans itself up after each day so as to be available to the next user.

Helpful Hint 5: How to link - it's this feature that helps make the GNG (or any wiki for that matter) extra special. There's two types of linking that you should learn - internal wiki link and external wiki link.

Here's the wysiwyg editor image for the internal wiki page link - insert image. It works to link different pages together within the GNG. When you click the internal wiki image in the wysiwyg editor, a box will pop up offering you first a "find" search mechanism. Simply type in a word or two of the GNG page you want to link to and click on the "find" button to locate that page. (Hint: Don't hit your return key, because that will get you nowhere.) You should then be offered a list of GNG pages that meet your word search criteria. Click on the correct link, which will then place the connection in the "page name" box. Click okay and you will return to your edit page with the linked page highlighted.

Here's the wysiwgy image for the external wiki page link - insert image. It works to link the GNG to website page outside the GNG. (ICON is an external link.) When you click the external wiki image in the wysiwyg editor, a box will pop up offering you a place to put the URL for the website you want to link to. What we suggest here is that you have another version of your internet software open to the website you want to link to, which allows you to copy and paste the address of that site easily. Then click okay, which will create the link and return you to your edit page with the linked page highlighted.

Helpful Hint 6: What if you want to create a new page? That's easy - look for the Quick Edit a Wiki box at the bottom of the left-hand menu. Simply type the name of the page you want to create; hit the button labeled Create/Edit; and the wiki will create the new page. This is also another way to edit a page (assuming you know the name of the page).

Helpful Hint 7: We always recommend previewing a page before you save it as a new version of the page you are working on. Just below the edit box is a Preview button that provides you with this capability. The Preview button also serves as a temporary save button. If you are like most people, you like to save your work as you continue to create it. That's what the Preview button does.

Also, the editor 'times-out' after about 20 minutes. (Don't worry, it will provide you an early warning.) By hitting the Preview button, it saves your work-in-progress and starts the time-out clock all over again.

Finally, the Save or Minor Edit buttons should be utilize only when you are ready to publish your page on the GNG. In other words, these buttons create a new version of the page that then becomes the new page as it appears on the GNG. Again, if you realize that you made a mistake on the newly saved page, either rollback the history (see Helpful Hint 1) or simply edit again to create yet another version.

Helpful Hint 8: The "Normal Editor" option appears just above the editorial space. The normal editor is essentially the wiki software code editor. If you switch to that editor, suddenly you will see all your words surrounded by odd looking signals that represent the software code for underlining, for bold, for links, etc. To be honest, sometimes it's easier to edit a page using the normal editor instead of the wysiwyg editor because the wysiwyg editor sometimes does strange things to your text. That's just the nature of the beast, so once you become familiar with how a wiki works, you might find it helpful to use the normal editor to get your changes 'just right.'

BTW, if you find something wrong with the wysiwyg editor, or just frustrating, please send us an email. The GNG is a work in progress and anything we can do to improve the software on which it is base, the better the GNG will be.