Wiki Editing Help

Simple editing

Simple editing is one of the major benefits of using a wiki. Users can edit pages without knowing HTML, and still use many of the formatting features of HTML. Please feel free to experiment in the Sandbox.

Note that Wiki is a general name for this type of collaborative software. There are many different Wiki sites and products out there, and some use different types of "markup" (coding) than others. AboutUs.org uses a version of MediaWiki software, same as Wikipedia.org and related sites, so the markup is very similar; if you know how to make links, format text, etc. on Wikipedia, you'll find it easy to do the same things at AboutUs.org.

Basic Text

Most text does not require any special changes for wiki form. A few basic rules are:

• Do not indent paragraphs.
• Leave a single blank line between paragraphs.
• To create a horizontal line, type 4 or more minus/dash/hyphen (-) characters.
• There is no need to encode HTML characters like , or &.

Bold and Italic Text

To mark text as:

bold, use three single quotes - ''' bold ''',

italic, use two single quotes - '' italic '',

bold+italic, use five single quotes - ''''' bold+italic '''''.

To mark text as bold, italic or fixed-width, you can use the HTML <b>, <i> and code tags. For example:

<b> bold </b>, 
<i> italic </i>,
<b> <i> bold+italic </i> </b>.

Note that MediaWiki (like most Wikis) processes pages line-by-line, so if you want three bold lines of text, you will need to use three separate <b>...</b> tags. Also note that unclosed or unmatched tags are not removed from the page.

Headings

Headings are delimited by 1-7 equal signs (=). They basically correspond to HTML's <h1> through <h7> tags. Please type the corresponding titles with only the beginning letter of the word with a capital letters. Other than names of people, websites and songs..there are no exceptions to this!

= Headline size 1 =
== Headline size 2 ==
=== Headline size 3 ===
==== Headline size 4 ====
===== Headline size 5 =====
===== Headline size 6 =====
====== Headline size 7 ======

Lists

Simple lists:

* Text for a bulleted list item.
** Text for second-level list.
*** Text for third level, etc.

...which looks like:

• Text for a bulleted list item.
  • Text for second-level list.
    • Text for third level, etc.

Numbered lists:

# Text for a numbered list item.
## Text for second-level list.
### Text for third level, etc.
## Another Text for the second level.

...which looks like:

1. Text for a numbered list item.
   1. Text for second-level list.
      1. Text for third level, etc.
   2. Another Text for the second level.

Indented Text

Simple indented text:

: Text to be indented (quote-block)
:: Text indented more
::: Text indented to third level

...which looks like:

Text to be indented (quote-block)

Text indented more

Text indented to third level

Preformatted Text

Individual lines can be displayed as preformatted (fixed-width or "typewriter"-font) text by placing one or more spaces at the start of the line. Other wiki formatting (like links) will be applied to this kind of preformatted text.

Additionally, multi-line sections can be marked as preformatted text using lines starting with <pre> (to start preformatted text), and </pre> (to end preformatted text). The <pre> and </pre> tags are not displayed. Wiki links and other formatting is not done within a preformatted section. (If you want wiki formatting, use spaces at the start of the line instead of the <pre> and </pre> tags.)

For instance:

Preformatted section here.  No other link
  or format processing
is done on preformatted sections.
For instance, [[Soccer]] is not a link here.

and:

  This is the starting-spaces version of
  preformatted text.  Note that links like
  Soccer still work.

Colors

For colored text, use:

{{color|name of the color OR hex code|your text here}}

For a blue text, you should use the following code:

{{color|blue|your text here}}

The text would look like this:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

You may also use bold text, italic text or even bold + italic text:

This is a RED ITALIC text!

This is a GREEN BOLD text!

This is a BLUE BOLD ITALIC text!

For more information, see Template:color.