LQWiki:How to edit a page

You can edit any article in the LinuxQuestions.org Wiki by clicking the Edit this page link. You'll get a text box with the current contents of the page formatted in Wiki markup. If the page does not exist yet you will be able to create it and the text box will be empty.

You can modify the page however you want, but anything you add must be compatible with the LinuxQuestions.org copyleft. It helps the rest of us if you follow our policies and guidelines and manual of style, but don't let that stop you from plunging forward. It's more important that you add something than that you do it perfectly.

In compatible web browsers, an editing toolbar is automatically displayed at the top of the edit box providing you've got:

• JavaScript enabled in your web browser.
• The "Show edit toolbar" checkbox ticked in your preferences.

The edit toolbar enables you to quickly add Wiki markup to your pages.

For example - to add the markup for creating an internal link, simply select the word(s), then click the "Ab" button on the edit toolbar.

Another example - to add the markup for inserting your signature and a timestamp at the cursor point, simply click on the "Your signature with timestamp" button on the edit toolbar. (this inserts the relevant markup at the cursor)

To see what your changes will look like, hit the Show preview button, which will not save the page. Do a preview just before saving the page, to make sure your changes look right. When you're happy with the changes, hit the Save page button to save the page.

You can cancel your edits by clicking the Cancel link, and of course Editing help brings you here.

Beneath the article editing text box is a short field labeled Summary. This is for putting a short note about what you've done to an article, such as "added correct compiler flag" or "spelling 'miserable' -> 'miserable'" or "updated instructions to include new kernel options". It can be helpful for people who are looking at the Recent changes or Page history pages to quickly see what you did.

You must be logged in to a user account to edit a page. There will be a This is a minor edit checkbox for marking your changes as "minor". The idea with this is that people reviewing page history or recent changes can filter out unimportant changes. It's up to you to determine what makes your changes "minor" -- usually, spelling corrections, grammar, or formatting changes are "minor", and changes to the real information on a page are not.

The Watch this article checkbox puts this article on your watchlist. Any changes to the article, or to the article's talk page, by you or anyone else will show up in your watchlist, so you can keep an eye on the article.

The default setting -- whether these checkboxes are checked or not by default -- can be set in your user preferences.

Some helpful markup

• To make a piece of text, into bold text, simply enclose it at either end with 3 apostrophes.
• To make a piece of text, into Italics, simply enclose it at either end with 2 apostrophes.
• To make a piece of text into bulleted text, simply add asterisks to the left of the text - the number of asterisks to the left determines the bullet level.
• To transform a list into a numbered list simply add a hash character to the left of every item in the list.
• You can use a series of colons to indent passages of text/characters etc - the number of colons to the left of a passage determines the indent level.
• Headings are created by enclosing a piece of text at either end with the same number of equals signs.