[pmwiki-users] Re-thinking Intro to markup pages

[Mark Paterson]

I wondered if a newbie opinion would be useful in thinking of what to put on
this page.
My first day using PmWiki I got stuck because I had no idea how to get
started. So I went to Google and found a link to the PmWiki site showing
examples of how to format text in a wiki. This was great information. I was
intrigued, but still missing one thing: how to actually start editing a
page. You'd think I'd be smart enough to see the "Edit" action on the upper
right side of the page, but somehow I wasn't. I don't remember if this was
because the page had the actions turned off, or if I just didn't spot it.
So, anyway, a couple of thoughts based on my experience:
1) If this page is the place to begin, it would be nice if provided content
on how to edit, or linked to a page that did. I don't mean that it should
have a lot of content here. Just a sentence or two saying "Wiki is not
WYSIWYG. Instead, you edit the page and add your content. You can do this by
hitting the edit link on the top right of most pages, or adding ?action=edit
to the URL." BTW, I was initially reluctant to edit the URL because it felt
a bit like "hacking" the site - like I was trying to go somewhere that the
site didn't want me to go. Now that I'm used to it, it's no big deal.
2) Accessibility is very important. I think that the content on John's page
is great. It's concise, and it shows by example, which is just what I needed
as a beginner. I have no problems with the layout. If you want to change the
style, or do two column or two pages, fine. I probably slightly lean towards
having everything on one page, so I have one place to search, but having an
index page would be OK too. But I need to be able to get here from Google
easily (or at a pinch, from the PmWiki search). I don't know if I'm typical,
maybe not, but nowadays I rarely try going to a specific site first for
searches; Google usually works. If there's a way (maybe using keywords?) to
map "beginner," "newbie," "editing" and so forth to this page, that would be
very helpful.

Hope this helps.

Mark
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