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

Oliver Betz list_ob at gmx.net
Thu Feb 19 08:26:34 CST 2009


Mark Paterson wrote:

>I wondered if a newbie opinion would be useful in thinking of what to put on
>this page.

newbie opinions are exactly the kind of information needed.

>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

do you remember the URL of this site with great information?

>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

BasicEditing does so, but there is certainly room for improvements.

>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

I like the "not WYSIWYG" hint and added it to BasicEditing.

>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

Ack, I wouldn't expect this from a newbie.

>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

http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/BasicEditing is also meant to be
concise. It just was a bit overgrown in the past.

>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,

The link to BasicEditing is in the pmwiki.org sidebar, therefore
visible on most pages.

>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.

This is possible with the (:keywords word1, word2, ...:) directive.
Any more suggestions about keywords to add?

Oliver
-- 
Oliver Betz, Muenchen (oliverbetz.de)




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