How to Edit the Boise Wiki

Kudos to those of you who have been brave enough to jump in and edit the Boise Wiki.  Pass the awesomesauce!

I just wanted to share a few tips on editing the wiki.  You can view more detailed instructions at the wiki’s own Quick Start Guide.

Topics Pages, and Creating New Pages

If you’re editing a topics page (see the “Parks” page for instance), it’s probably best to not describe the parks in detail on that page–because it will eventually be a long one–and instead link to a new page.  To create a new page, simply click “edit” on the topics page and then type this:

[“Julia Davis Park”] (or whatever you want your new page to be named)

Click “Save Changes,” and you’ll be directed back to the topics page you’ve just edited.  From there you can click on the link to your new page.  Once you’re on the new page, simply click “edit” at the top of the page and add your text there.

So, for example, I took the liberty (wiki liberty!) of editing Ellen’s page on Julia Davis Park in this manner–I moved it to its own page and then added a photo and attribution for the photo.

To see how I performed this magic (wiki magic!), simply go to http://www.boisewiki.org/Julia_Davis_Park and click “Edit.”  You’ll be able to see the code I used to add a photo and links to websites outside the wiki.

Using Images

To upload a photo or image, take these steps:

1. While you’re in page-editing mode, click the “Upload Files” button in the light blue box below the text.  Remember your photo’s name, as you’ll need it to get the photo to appear.

2. Add to the text of your page this notation:

[[Image(WhatYouNamedYourPhoto)]]

3. Preview.  Always preview.

4. Add photo attribution.  Again, look at the Julia Davis Park page to see how I did this.

Finding photos to use

My favorite place to find photos of Boise is Flickr.  Simply go to Flickr.com and follow these steps:

1. Do a search for a place (e.g. Julia Davis Park)

2. When the results appear, click on the tiny “Advanced Search” link to the right of the text box with your search term in it.

3. Scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced Search page and check the box next to “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content.”

4. Since Boise Wiki is a noncommercial site, and since you’ll be using the photos as-is, it should be fine to use any of the photos that show up in the search results.  Remember to attribute them to their photographers–you can see a model of how to do this on the Julia Davis Park page.  (If you do want to alter a photo before posting it, be sure it’s licensed for such use.  To discover its license, either click on the Creative Commons icons under “License” in the right-hand sidebar of the photo’s page, or perform a new advanced search–only this time check both the “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content” page and the ” Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon” boxes.

Any questions?  Send ’em my way, either by e-mail or in the comments here.

Happy wiki-ing!