Overview

Preknowledge

This section of the tutorial provides an overview of a few concepts and approaches to creating links and pages within WikiEducator. We recommend that you read this overview before proceeding with the actual tutorial, which is covered in the remaining sections.

The Structure of the Wiki

You should think of a Wiki as a collection of individual pages. These pages can be connected with each other in different ways. Consequently a wiki provides considerable flexibility to structure content and specify how different pages relate to each other.

Wikis often display a flat organisational structure, without any predetermined hierarchy between pages. Hyperlinks connect one page to another, and content can emerge in a rather organic fashion. This flexibility can be confusing for new users, however, there are tools and features in the wiki which will help you find your way. For example, you can find out what pages link to any page in the wiki by clicking on the "What links here" link under the toolbox on the left-hand side of your screen.

While the flat structure can suit much of the content on the site, it may sometimes be desirable to group pages along a more traditional hierarchical structure, where sets of pages can be specified as siblings of parent others. For the most part, the flat structure is sufficient, but we will explore how to create hierarchical structures in the Thinking about Structure tutorial, as this may be of benefit when creating educational resources.

Deciphering the language of links and pages

The differences between links and pages can be confusing. Therefore before we start with the tutorial, let's consider the basic concepts that will be used.

Key points

It can be useful to think about the things you might want to do in relation to pages and links: Creating a link from a page in the wiki to another external web site, which we call an external link, for instance linking Page A in WikiEducator to the home page of your organisation. Creating an internal link between existing pages, for instance creating a link on Page A to Page B, where both pages already exist in WikiEducator; Creating an internal link to a new page in WikiEducator, for instance creating a link on Page A to Page C, where Page C is a new page which must still be created in the wiki;

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