Wikipage instructions

If you've clicked to get here, you are willing fill in some details about yourself or someone else in the AO group such as your/their personal page, the publications page or anything else. I will put down a list of easy (I hope) instructions to keep upto date and maintain the webpage.

Basic wikitext

There are already a few pages on this wiki that can help you with putting up text/links/pictures on any page. The best reference page is;

Wikitext examples

which will get you upto speed. Along with this, when you create/edit a page, there is an edit bar that will input wikitext special characters for you, so you don't need to remember them all. Here are a few quick examples that are commonly used in this wiki if you don't want to read through the examples page;

• <code>some example code</code> will make the sample code look like this:- some example code
• <nowiki><some_markup> some code </some_markup></nowiki> will ignore all markups in 'nowiki' and result in:- <some_markup> some code </some_markup>
• ''Italic text'' results in:- Italic text
• '''Bold text''' results in:- Bold text
• You are required to put a double 'return' in the edit text to see regular text on a new line (except with bullet points, numbered lists, titles, etc)
• <!-- some hidden text --> will comment text and can only be seen in edit mode, can be used to keep old text without deleting it
• <pre>some large code</pre> will put code into a special box and will show:-

  some large code

• ==Title== and ===Subtitle=== will create a title and subtitle on a page, shown below:-

Title

Subtitle

• ---- will add a line into the page:-

---

• You can use :, * and # to indent, bullet point and number text respectively. The more characters you add (e.g. **, ***) the more you subdive the section. Adding more : will indent further, adding more * will bullet inside another bullet point and adding more # will split up numbered sections.

Basic links

Mediawiki makes it very easy to link to other pages as long as you are consistent on naming. The largest problem when using links (and are subsequentlyeasily resolved) is when to use capital letters for page titles and whether or not to use underscores. General in links, use capital letters if the page has capital letters and don't use underscores (there are some exceptions, but even if you encounter them, you can just go back and replace them). Its best to test every link once you've created a page.

• [[Applied Optics]] creates a link like this :- Applied Optics
• [[Applied Optics|Welcome page]] creates a named link (seperated by | )like this :- Welcome page
• [[#Basic wikitext]] creates a link to a subsection like this :- #Basic wikitext
• [[Main page#Contributing to the wiki|Contributing]] creates a link to a subsection on different page named like this :- Contributing
• http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/engineering/departments/eee/index.aspx creates a link like this (use nowiki tags if you don't want to link to a webpage, mailto: email address will also work like this):- http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/engineering/departments/eee/index.aspx
• [http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/engineering/departments/eee/index.aspx EEE department webpage] creates a link like this, notice the use of single square brackets and no | in the markup:- EEE department webpage

Getting started (and eventually finishing)

Ok, so now that you have a decent enough amount of wikitext markups under your belt, you need follow these steps (skip any of these if you already have them, or can't be bothered to do them):-

1. Get yourself an optics wiki account. Request a login using your full name as the user name, then email either Roger Light, Steve Sharples or Matt Clark to get your account confirmed.
2. Login (link in top right hand of page)
3. Upload a picture of yourself. Use this page to upload a file. There's no naming convention yet, but I would recommend using first-name_second-name_year.png or .jpg. Other formats are accepted (use additional middle and second names if you have them)
4. Create your personal page. This is very easy, in the address bar, stick in http://optics.eee.nottingham.ac.uk/wiki/first-name_second-name. If you have middle names, double barrel surnames or anything of the like, use underscores instead of spaces and keep in hyphens. If you are in two minds about whether or not to use a nickname or an alternative name, I'd suggest using whatever you're offically known as (in journal papers or documents) then link in these webpages with your other name using the link markups from above. Your page won't exist so click on the 'create' tab near the page search bar.
   • Fill up your page. Use Matt Clark's page as a general template. You could copy his entire page (click on edit, then copy/paste onto you're page) then add/remove at your own convenience. Of course, not everyone will have an awards section and may not even have a publications section (I know I don't have one yet) but you can add other sections which you deem relavent to your page. Just add new titles to your page. If you have copy/pasted, replace Image:mattphotforpubs.png (near the top of the page) with your own link Image:first-name_second-name_year.png. Replace any other text you're comfortable with. A lot of the markup may still be a mystery and will be explained below so that you can sort the page out, but for now, you can at least have a page and the website looks half way complete.
   • If you want to redirect to an external webpage instead of filling up another page on here (not really recommended, as this website should remain live and maintained) then you can use the tags <extredir>http://someother.page/yourpage</extredir>. This will give the user two seconds to view whatever messege you put up to let them know they are being redirected. M G Somekh currently has this redirect in place.
5. Next, goto Personal Pages. You need to add your name to the table. To do this;
   • Delete |} at the end of the page
   • Add your own code;

   |-

   |align="center"|[[first-name second-name]]||your location||align="center"|your phone number||align="center"|your email ID

   |}

   • So as an example, Matt Clark's entry looks like this:-

   |-

   |align="center"|[[Matt Clark]]||Tower 607||align="center"|(0115) 95-15536||align="center"|matt.clark

   |}

6. Here's the tricky part, not coding wise, but with general workability of the webpage. Many people will have been known as something other that their full name in journal papers, presentations, etc. These could include initials or an alternative first name. To this end, you will need to create a page (similar to how you created your original page) with this name and use the markup #REDIRECT [[pagename]] where pagename is the your name (your webpage). Becareful with this, you don't want to redirect uncessarily, someone may have the same initials/name as you and it's quite tedious to undo (links on every page it's mentioned on will need to be change). Examples of this are S D Sharples, Steve D Sharples, M Clark, Matthew Clark. Double redirects are not allowed (redirect to a redirect). Notice on each of the links above, it shows where you have been redirected from at the top.