This website is setup so that class association members can add and update content. This has enabled us to create one of the best resources for garage boat building on the web, together with an archive of great information about loads of past and present boats. The functionality allowing us to do this comes from the software that the site runs on called dokuwiki, this is a type of wiki, so called as they are designed to be fast to update. It has a simple to use interface for quickly creating and editing pages. If you are not used to it updating a website can be intimidating, however, if you can send email, use facebook or the forum, you should have nothing to fear about creating or updating a page.

To login to the wiki follow the link at the top right hand side of the page, and use the same login details as the forum. If you need to change any profile settings, such as email address, password or your display name this needs to be done through the forum.

The wiki is designed for collaborative updating of documents so it keeps the old revisions of a page. Meaning that if you accidentally delete part of a page, or make a mistake you can revert to an older version. If you want to test some things, or have a practice you can try them out in the PlayGround. It is possible to have a look at the older versions of pages, and see the changes made when someone edits a page by looking at the ‘’recent changes’’

You can edit the pages using your web browser, without any add-ins or additional software. The wiki uses a simple text syntax to control how the page looks, you can get a full list on the Formatting Syntax page. However you do not have to remember complex codes to edit pages as there are buttons at the top of the edit box that will insert the appropriate text at the cursor when clicked. The benefit of the text syntax is that all the formatting info is visible so that after you have been using it for a while you can easily type the common formatting without having to use the buttons. In this section we describe the basics for creating and editing content, together with some extensions to the basic system used on the site, and descriptions of how the site is setup.

To organise the content on the site we use folders or as the wiki calls them namespaces. These folders are mainly of interest when you are linking to a page, or an image that has been saved into a different name space. To make a link to a page or image that is in a different namespace just put the name of the namespace before a colon in your link. If you use the link wizard, or the image browser then this will be taken care of for you.

When logged in pages can be edited using the ‘’edit page’’ button on the top left of the screen you just type the text you want in the text box, and use the buttons on the toolbar to change the formatting, once finished you can use the ‘’preview’’ button to check if everything is working, and then the ‘’finish edit’’ to save the changes.

Some of the buttons are quite obvious, some are less so, they are described below.

  • Bold - Loud text
  • Italic -Text that is leaning over
  • Underline – Underlines text, this can be confusing as the default for a link is to have an underline
  • Code Text – Puts the text into a box and ignores any links or syntax
  • Strike-through – <delete>Puts a line through the text<delete>
  • Same Level Headline – Adds a headline at the same level as the current paragraph
  • Lower Level Headline – Adds a headline at a lower level than the current paragraph
  • Higher Level Headline – Adds a headline at a lower level than the current paragraph
  • Headline – Lets you select a headline from 1 to 5 with 1 being the biggest.
  • Internal Link – Puts an internal link, you can use the link wizard to navigate to the page you want to link to .
  • External Link – Adds the code for inserting an external link
  • Ordered List – Adds one line of a numbered list, press return after typing to start a new list
  • Unordered List – Adds a bulleted list, like this one
  • Horizontal Rule – Puts a line across the page
  • Inserts an image – see the Images Help Page for more details
  • Inserts a smilie - :-)
  • Inserts a special symbol – Good for all those Greek letters
  • Inserts your signature – Useful if you have added a comment.

There are a few more formats that you can use by directly entering text, see Formatting Syntax for more details.

Pictures help to tell the story, and it is easy to insert pictures either from the library, hosted on other websites or to upload new pictures from your computer. To add a picture click on the picture button of the edit toolbar The Image button is highlighted in Red This will open a new window that lets you browse through thumbnails of the images that have already been uploaded, and to upload new images of your own. For more info on how to upload images and our naming guidelines please look at the Images Help Page

Links help people to navigate around the site, and can lead people into looking at more of the site e.g. in a race report by putting a link to the boat page for each boat when it is first mentioned people can have a look at the boat, and find out more.

Links can be added using either the ‘’Internal Link’’, or ‘’External Link’’ buttons. Editing buttons with the two link buttons highlighted in red.

The internal link button brings up the ‘’Link Wizard’’ that lets you browse through the site to find the page you want to link to, by clicking on the page name it inserts the correct text into the page.

The wiki is set to display the first headline in the page as the link to that page, if you want to display something different then you add the text you want after the |

You can make an external link just by typing the web address www.uk-cherub.org however if it is a long address and you want to display something shorter you can use the ‘’external link’’ button in the tool bar this gives you

[[http://example.com|External Link]]

Simply replace the text with what you want, and it will display with whatever text you have after the |.

Tables can be very useful, particularly for race results.

Heading 1 Heading 2 Heading 3
Row 1 Col 1 Row 1 Col 2 Row 1 Col 3
Row 2 Col 1 some colspan (note the double pipe)
Row 3 Col 1 Row 3 Col 2 Row 3 Col 3

Table rows have to start and end with a | for normal rows or a ^ for headers, and you need a | or ^ between each cell.

^ Heading 1      ^ Heading 2       ^ Heading 3          ^
| Row 1 Col 1    | Row 1 Col 2     | Row 1 Col 3        |
| Row 2 Col 1    | some colspan (note the double pipe) ||
| Row 3 Col 1    | Row 3 Col 2     | Row 3 Col 3        |

For large tables with long text in each row it is easy to get lost. I find that the easiest way to setup a table is to use a spreadsheet, first put the data in where I want it, and then insert columns filled with | and ^ as required. The text can then be copied into the wiki. There are a few more formats that you can use, see Formatting Syntax for more details.

News Report

The most common type of new page that people will want to create are the news articles on the front page. This is done by typing the title of the page into the “New Blog Entry:” box in the middle of the front page, then click on the “Create this page” button. This will create the page and you will see the editing box allowing you to write your story.

The first stage to creating a new page is to create a link to it, this is done by editing an existing page, and inserting the link. Putting the name for the page in square brackets will create the link. [[new_page]] The name you put in the square brackets will be the name of the text file, but it does not have to be the title of the page, or what is displayed in the link. The wiki is setup so that the name of the page, and the text of the links defaults to the first header within the page. So the boat page for AquaMarina is [[boats:2681]], however if I create a link to the page it will display as AquaMarina Once the page that you are editing has been saved, the link will appear Red showing that it is for a page that has not been created yet. Clicking on the link will create the new page,

  • resources/help.txt
  • Last modified: 2023/03/09 08:25
  • by oliver_morrell