Help:MediaWiki basics/Training review

So you've completed the four MediaWiki training exercises? If you haven't you can find them here:

If you have, then it's time to review.

MediaWiki review

The wiki

You learned MediaWiki is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It's powerful, it's scalable, and it's full of features. It uses wikitext format, a special set of codes to present information in the wiki. When content is edited in MediaWiki, previous versions of the page are retained, allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming.

From there you learned about what a wiki actually is. It allows authorized users to do what?

add content
modify content
remove content
collaborate with others
build and manage knowledge bases
maintain research notes
maintain community web content
disseminate information to a broad audience
provide consistency to otherwise disparate information
did we mention "collaborate"?

Creating pages and organizing content

Creating a page involves choosing the right namespace, selecting an appropriate title, entering the title into the search box, selecting "Go", and choosing the option to create the page on the wiki. Of course, namespaces have particular purposes, titles have naming conventions, and page content has particular formatting and organization requirements, at least to meet the standards of LIMSwiki.

Once the page is started, you begin adding substance to it. If it's a page about say... the clinical laboratory, you'll have plenty to write about: what it is, how it operates, and how it's regulated. That's likely three separate sections right there. You'll want to divide that content, and you do it by using headings and subheadings. You should immediately notice this "Creating pages and organizing content" section is subheaded to "MediaWiki review" for example.

Aside from creating sections with headers and subheaders, later entering paragraphs of text into those sections, we discussed at least three other ways to organize content on pages:

1. With bulleted lists like this...

This is a point I want to make.

This point may logically follow the previous or it may stand by itself.

And while no less important, this point is here on its own.

...formatted like this:

* This is a point I want to make.

* This point may logically follow the previous or it may stand by itself.

* And while no less important, this point is here on its own.

2. With numerical ordered lists like this...

Item number one goes here.
Item number two goes here.
And let's not forget item number three.

...formatted like this:

# Item number one goes here.
# Item number two goes here.
# And let's not forget item number three.

3. With tables like this...

Wonder Books Prices
Product	Student price	Commercial price
Summer Has Gone	$12.95	$15.95
Winter Is Coming	$13.49	$16.19

...formatted like this:

{| class="wikitable"
 |-
  ! colspan="3"| Wonder Books Prices
 |-
  ! style="color:green; background-color:#afafba;" | Product
  ! style="color:green; background-color:#afafba;" | Student price
  ! style="color:green; background-color:#afafba;" | Commercial price
 |- 
  | '''Summer Has Gone'''
  | style="background-color:white;" align="center" | $12.95
  | style="background-color:white;" align="center" | $15.95
 |- 
  | '''Winter Is Coming'''
  | style="background-color:white;" align="center" | $13.49
  | style="background-color:white;" align="center" | $16.19
 |- 
|}

Formatting textual content

We learned there are numerous ways to format the text you enter into the wiki. Some of those methods use built-in MediaWiki code, while others use HTML-based codes to render text a certain way.

Let's throw all those formatting methods into a piece of text, just for fun. Then we'll show the code used to get the result:

Once upon a time a sleepy sister Sarah constantly strove to stay awake. She sang a song that went a little something like this...
Slumber grips me
tight and true.
Why I fight it
I can't say.

Sighing softly 
I climb the stairs,
open the door,
and peek inside,
only to find
what I had left behind.
She found she had reached the point of sleepiness² afterwards. She fought to keep her eyes open. Yet by the door she also saw a book with the title "True Sleep Is Never Far Away".
She opened to a random page to find the following words: "When ~~sleep~~ dreams overtake you, fly freely with the current."
What could this mean? she pondered.

And the code, with all the formatting marks in their full glory...

<blockquote>
'''Once upon a time''' a sleepy sister Sarah ''constantly'' strove to stay awake. She sang a song that went a little something like this...

<pre>Slumber grips me
tight and true.
Why I fight it
I can't say.

Sighing softly 
I climb the stairs,
open the door,
and peek inside,
only to find
what I had left behind.</pre>

She found she had reached the point of sleepiness<sup>2</sup> afterwards. She fought to keep her eyes open. Yet by the door she also saw a book with the title "<tt>True Sleep Is Never Far Away</tt>". 

She opened to a random page to find the following words: "When <strike>sleep</strike> dreams overtake you, fly freely with the <u>current</u>." 

<code><nowiki>What could this mean?</nowiki></code> she pondered.
</blockquote>