Wikieducator tutorial/Thinking about Structure/Summary and FAQs

It is important to give some thought to the structure of your content before embarking on authoring in the wiki. While often linking from one page to another may be enough for small resources, for large quantities of content it may be beneficial to create some kind of hierarchical approach and use the subpages functionality discussed in this tutorial to provide structure or narrative. Using navigational templates can also help users to know where they are in relation to the content as a whole. As WikiEducator grows it may also be useful to allocate categories to specific content to facilitate browsing of the different types of content that will become available.

=Frequently asked questions (FAQs)=

This question relates to a specific practical problem, but also to the broader issue of hierarchical vs. flat (non-hierarchical) structures.
 * In order to practice the techniques introduced in this unit, I tried creating a Category link at the bottom of the first page of Unit 1 of the Costs & Financing in Open Schooling materials. On the new directory page for this category, the title of the sub-page I was on when I created the link automatically appeared.  However, if all of the CFOS pages are shown in the directory it could make navigation difficult.  It may be better to show only the titles of each unit or of the overall resource. How can this be done?  (Submitted by ED)


 * Another useful feature of these tutorials is the 'next page' and 'previous page' buttons at the bottom of each page. I used the edit page to check the syntax for this, which appears quite complex.  When I tried copying this onto another practice page, I couldn't figure out how to alter the links to make it work properly.  Is there anywhere that explains how to do this? (Submitted by ED)


 * Is there a more user-friendly way to add content (i.e., GUI?)

We'll elaborate on these questions in time - but for now a few quick answers. Yes there are wikis that have a rich text gui, but, if we implement this, there is no going back and we shut ourselves off from all code advances in the Mediawiki software engine. I've heard that there is much progress with integrating a rich text editing solution and hopefully we will see this in the near future. Suggestion - move this question to first edit. Possible think about have one long page of FAQs in addition to the FAQs in context --Mackiwg 02:18, 15 February 2007 (CET)


 * When I add a Question in FAQ, is it traceable back to me?

Yes. If you go to the history link tab above for this page, you will see the changes you made to this page. If you click on any name there, it will link back to that person's User Page. In wikis that don't require a log in (like Wikipedia) you can only trace back to the IP address from where the edit was made.


 * Can i link to a page with content that exists or must the link be made before the page content is created?


 * I've just tried to create subpages on the UNESCO OER community wiki. I wanted subpages for the appendices of our Way Forward.  I followed the instructions in the tutorial, but instead of getting a page for each appendix off the main Way Forward page, I got a page for each appendix with a slash in front - i.e. a new page called "/Appendix 1", not linked to the Way Forward page.  Any ideas why this might have happened? --Csavage 10:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It's ok, I've just solved my own problem - had to enable subpages in the localsettings file. --Csavage 14:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Does To_do_list template exist; it did not work for me. I don't see any icon for it; we get them with other templates: