Formatting Pages

Even though a wiki is a web page, for security reasons, you're not allowed to add HTML. HTML opens security holes that can allow people to insert malicious code through JavaScript exploits and other techniques.

In most wikis the emphasis is on content, not presentation. Basic markup rules allow people to focus on expressing their ideas, not making them pretty. The wiki plain text formatting syntax is easy to learn. If you want the whole scoop on how formatting works, the wiki page on syntax is what you need.

But keep reading, because we have some plugins installed that can make your wiki experience more interesting.

There is no true WYSIWYG in most wikis. This one is no exception. This almost-WYSIWYG is good enough though. To see what your page will look like, you only have to hit the Preview button. Pretty soon you won't need the buttons along the top to get your page to look the way you want. The buttons are always there for you though.

The best way to learn what the buttons do is to type in a word or phrase, select it with your mouse, and hit a button to see what you get. You can highlight multiple lines or a single word. Some buttons will cause a simple format change, like making a word bold, or italic, or underlined. You can also add pictures, videos, and external links to your pages.

Play around. You can always edit your page again, or delete the page if it was just for learning.

With the wrap plugin you can put in other formatting, like highlighted text, emphasized text, or you can really …

You can format your text with more options using the typography plugin. The syntax follows the style you can use in an html <span>, but isn't exactly the same. If you want some text to be 125% larger than normal, bold, and orange, you can do it.

One of the limitations of wikis is aligning text on a page. Everything tends to pile up on the left. The divalign2 plugin changes this.

Text can be to the left.

Text can be centered.

Text can be to the right.

Text can even be justified, but I need more text for this example: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

All you have to do for your page to have a table of contents is to include three or more headlines in the page. This is particularly handy if you're going to have long pages, and they can logically be broken into sections.

For some basic examples, click the Edit this page button for this page, or any other, and take a look at what was used. See how simple the formatting can be. You can do this with any page that's not protected. Even pages that are protected have a Show page button. This allows you to see what the author did to format a page, without being able to edit it.

Remember to hit the Preview button so you can scroll back and forth between the text entered, and the page rendered. Keep in mind you can always go back and edit again if your results aren't what you wanted.

Enjoy!

— Jerry Nowlin 02/17/2016 16:22