Summary & FAQs

Summary

There are two categories of links, each with a range of options for displaying the hyperlink (descriptive) text to the reader: External page links always use the full URL of the webpage (including the http://). When creating an external link using the Rich Editor toolbar, type or past the full URL in the Link text field in the Link dialog box, for example: "http://www.oerfoundation.org". When you want to display text different from the full URL, type the desired text in the edit window and highlight it, before clicking on the Insert/Edit Link button in the Rich Editor toolbar. If you want the external link to appear as a numbered reference like a footnote, check out the original tutorial on external links. Internal page links always use the wiki page name (the text which appears after the http://wikieducator.org/ prefix in the page's URL). When creating an internal link using the Rich Editor toolbar, type, paste, or select the page name in the Link text field in the Link dialog box. The wiki software will search for the page in the data base and if it exists in WikiEducator, the link will automatically appear as a blue hyperlink in the published view. (Remember that wiki page names are case sensitive.) If the internal link is a new page, the link will appear in red in the published view, alerting users that content must still be generated for this new page in the wiki. When you want to display text different from the actual name of the page in the wiki, type the text in the edit window and highlight it, before clicking on the Insert/Edit Link button in the Rich Editor toolbar.

The easiest way to create a new page on the wiki is to create an internal wiki link that points to the page you wish to create. When you follow a red link (indicating that a page does not yet exist), you can add content to it, thus creating the page.

Tip: If you want to create a new page but are not sure where it will eventually go in the scheme of your larger content, use your User page or Sandbox as a kind of holding space for the link to new content; later you can add this link into your project to point to this page. Remember if there is no link from an existing page to your new page, you may have difficulty finding it again.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

How do I find the pages I created?

A wiki uses a flat structure, and may contain thousands of pages. WikiEducator currently has 157,431 pages, and you wouldn't be the first person who has lost a page! You should be able to find your page with a little investigative work.

1. Once you are logged in, click the my contributions link which appears above the content area of the screen. The User contributions page for your username will display, listing all the edits you have made. You may be able to find the "missing" page by carefully looking through this list, although if you've contributed thousands of edits - this may take some time. If you remember part of the page name or a word or phrase that you used in the summary, you may use your browser's Find command to identify entries that include this combination of characters.
2. If you can remember the name of your page, try using the search function located on the left-hand side of your screen.
3. If you can remember what letter the page name begins with, you might find your page by browsing an alphabetical listing of a subset of pages. Click the Special pages link listed under the toolbox heading on the left. From the list that displays, click the All pages link under the Lists of pages heading (or use this internal link to All pages). Select a section to browse, or indicate a beginning or end point for browsing.

They say that prevention is better than cure and there are a number of things you can do to minimise the risk of not finding your creative works in WikiEducator.

1. While working on draft pages before you are sure where best to link these from, create the link to the new page from your own user page. This way you can return to your user page to find the link. Once the page is created, it is easy to insert the link from another page, using the instructions for creating an internal link.
2. When you create a new page, before saving it, mark the check box Watch this page (located just below the Summary box). This will automatically add the page to your watchlist, which you can access after logging in by clicking on the my watchlist link above the content area and then selecting view and edit watchlist under the main heading on your watchlist page.
3. You can also set your preferences to automatically add every page you create to your watchlist. Click on my preferences once you have logged in (located at the top of the screen) and select the Watchlist tab. Mark the checkbox Add pages I create to my watchlist.

I created a new page from another page - and worked on this new page, how do I move back to my first page?

1. The easiest way to move back from any page is to go to the toolbox section on the left-hand side of the page and click on the What links here link. This will list all the pages that link to the current page you are viewing, which will include the page that you used to link to the current page you are on.
2. There are more sophisticated techniques you can use by adding your own navigation to the respective page, for instance:
   • inserting an internal link referring back to the "parent" page.
   • inserting a navigation template which we deal with later in the tutorials. We recommend that you tackle this alternative once you have gained confidence with internal and external links.
   • using the slash (/) argument when creating subordinate pages, which we also cover later in the tutorials.

Do internal links follow a directory structure?

No. You can link to any page from anywhere in the wiki . The wiki does not have a native hierarchical structure. A wiki is a collection of pages which can be linked with each other by inserting an internal link. So if you insert an internal link on Page 1 to Page 2, the wiki does not assume a hierarchy (for example that Page 2 is a sub-page of the previous page). You will learn more about the structure of the wiki and in particular how to create subpages later in this tutorial.

Can two pages have the same name?

No. Each page in the wiki must have a unique page name. For example, a page called simply "Introduction" does not indicate what it is an introduction about. Because there can be only one page called "Introduction", if it is an introduction for a Biology course, a new Math course would not be able to use a page called "Introduction". In WikiEducator, we usually handle this by creating subpages, that is making the "Introduction" page subordinate to the main page. In this way, it is possible to create many "Introduction" pages with the same name as long as the parent page has a different name (for instance Biology/Introduction and Math/Introduction). This topic is covered in more depth in the Thinking about Structure section later in this tutorial.

How do you open a wiki page in a new window to avoid using the back button to get to the previous page?

You can open a new page automatically if you hold the shift button down, then click the link. This will keep the original page you were on in one window and open the link you clicked in a new window. You can also click on the right hand mouse button when your cursors is over a hyperlink and select the "open in a new window" option from this contextual menu.

You can also open the page in a new tab in some browsers (for example; Internet Explorer, Chrome) by clicking the link using the wheel on your mouse (click not scroll).

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