Help:Start a new page
From StartupCamp
Please note that this page is still under construction (eg: there may be several broken links)
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Logging into the Startup Camp Wiki
Accessing the Startup Camp Wiki
The Startup Camp Wiki is freely accessible for viewing to anybody who visits the site. However, to edit unprotected pages on the Camp Wiki, or to create new pages, you'll need a user account.
Creating an account on the Startup Camp Wiki
If you're a member of the Startup Camp community, then one of the first things you should consider doing when coming to the Startup Camp Wiki is creating an account. If you do not have an account already, you can create one here. Since Startup Camp is a community of people who generally want to get to know each other, it's better etiquette to select a username that's based on your actual name rather than to "hide" behind an alias that makes you as a member of the community harder to find for everybody else. For example, the Camp's Head Counselor picked the username David.Berlind. A dot is not required in between your first and last name. CamelCase, where you mash your first and last name together and capitalize each is a good choice too.
Creating and Editing Pages
Red Ink, the good kind
Just about text you see in red in this wiki is clickable. But red means something special. It means it's a link to a page that doesn't exist yet. For example, if you just created your account on this wiki and you're logged in, then when you look near the upper-right hand corner of this Web page, you should see your username in red. That means it's clickable. As with any red text, when you click on it, it will take you to a brand new page that you can edit and load with your own text. At the top of any new page should be four tabs: article, discussion, edit and watch. You'll see the name of the page and you'll probably see some text that says "There is currently no text on this page." So, one way to get to a new page is to click on red links.
Starting a new page by its URL
Using the browser address bar to enter a URL to a new page is an easy way to start the new page process. Pages on the Startup Camp Wiki follow the following format:
http://wiki.startupcamp.org/PageName (where "PageName" would be replaced with the actual page name)
If go to the address bar in your browser and enter a URL that conforms to the above format, substituting your new page name (using CamelCase of course) for "PageName", it will produce the same outcome as clicking on a red link. But instead of keying in a brand new URL, paste the URL from an existing page on the wiki, backspace over the page's name, and enter your own page name (again, using CamelCase).
Starting a new page by Search
Another way to start a new page on the Startup Camp Wiki is to use its search function to generate a red link for you. Simply go to the search box on the left, enter the new name for your page (again, using CamelCase), and press the Go button. When the search finds nothing, you'll see the sentence "You can create this page" on the results page and a part of it will be a red link. Clicking on that red link will take you to a new page by that name.
Generating the red link in another page
OK, this could be your first exposure to something called wiki markup, but there's nothing to be afraid of. It's relatively simple. Wiki markup involves the usage of special codes and characters to invoke certain functionality within the wiki. Wiki markup is needed for several common page authoring practices. For example, causing graphics to appear, creating grids or tables, and hyperlinking text. We'll be offering more complete information on wiki markup basics elsewhere on this wiki. But, like HTML (the markup language for regular Web pages), the easiest way to see how to do something special on a wiki page with wiki markup is to go to an existing page in the Startup Camp Wiki, click the edit tab, and look at the wiki markup that the page's author used to do certain things. It's important to note that there's no standard for wiki markup. In other words, from one type of wiki to the next, the markup language to do the same things may be different. The Startup Camp Wiki is based on MediaWiki. MediaWiki is the same type of wiki used by the Wikipedia (so the markup language between the two is the same).
So, now that we've broken the ice on wiki markup, we'll give you a taste of it by showing you how to use it to link some text that appears on one wiki page to another wiki page. If that other wiki page doesn't exist, as discussed earlier, the text that links to it will appear in red.
Let's say you're editing your personal user page on the Startup Camp Wiki and you want to link some text on it to a page that's going to describe a discussion that you're going to propose at Mashup Camp. But let's say that description page doesn't exist yet and you want to finish editing your personal user page first. First, if you're not there already, go to your personal user page (by clicking your user ID), and on the top, click the "edit" tab. This puts you into the editing mode for that page. Now, in the editing window, type in the following:
My name is John Doe and I'll be proposing a discussion on getting financing at Startup Camp
Now let's say you want to link the part that says "a discussion on getting financing" to a page named GettingFinancing (did you notice the use of CamelCase?). To do that, you would follow the following format:
[[Name of Page to link to|text that should be linked to that page]]
The most important parts to take note of are the double left brackets ([[) at the beginning, the vertical bar that separates the name of the page to link to and the text that gets linked (usually generated by pressing shift-backslash on your keyboard), and the double right brackets at the end ((]]).
So, here's how you'd enter the John Doe text from above (using wiki format) when editing a wiki page:
My name is John Doe and I'll be proposing [[GettingFinancing|a discussion on how to get financing for your startup]] at Startup Camp
The key things to notice are the name of the page which appears between the double-left brackets and the vertical bar and than the the text that links to that page after the vertical bar. Now, provided that nobody has created page named GettingFinancing on the Startup Camp Wiki, the line above should appear with a red link as follows once you click the "Save Page" button at the bottom of the editing page (the page that's shows itself when you've clicked the edit tab).
My name is John Doe and I'll be proposing a discussion on how to get financing for your startup at Startup Camp.
Then, as with all other red linked text, you just need to click on it to create the new page.
