There is an 'Edit this page' link at the bottom of every page in this Wiki (appears on lab computers only; admin login may be needed for some pages). That link will not be there if during a page's creation or editing, a restriction was placed. However, once one is logged in as admin, it will appear. Just click and then add or edit content in the text-box that appears. Type regular text. To format portions of text, e.g., to make something bold or italicized, or to create a heading, refer to the following guidelines. You can also add links and images. Read this for Special characters like ¾, °, α...

Also see this image illustrating the syntax.

If you want to restore a page to an earlier version (because of some reason, such as mistakes during editing, log in as administrator and click on the backup maintainance link that appears at the bottom. Follow provided instructions that appear.

A 'Delete this page' link appears at the bottom of every page once one is logged in as admin. Clicking that will delete the page and all associated files (attachments, etc.).

Begin by thinking where you'd like to have the new page. Say you want to add a new protocol on DNAse treatment of RNA. This should go in the 'Protocols' category. If you go to the 'Protocols' page (accessible from Home page of this Wiki), you will see a listing of subcategories. Decide where your item belongs, and click on that subcategory page. Maybe, that's where you'd like to list your protocol.

So, edit that subcategory page by clicking on the 'Edit this page' link at the bottom. In the subsequent editing text-box, type in, say, 'DNAse treatment of RNA' at the right place. At this point, this text will not be hyperlinked. You have to make it so by putting underscrores before, after and between the words of the text that you want to appear as a link - like this: '_DNAse_treatment_of_RNA_.' When you are done and view the page, it will have 'DNAse treatment of RNA' with a question-mark - ? - at the end. That means the actual page has yet to be created. To do so, click on the ? and start typing.

Edit the page that has the link (not the page that the link points to). Cut out the text (remember it will appear with underscores between the words, like '_DNAse_treatment_of_RNA_'). Save the page. Then go to the page where you now want the link. Edit it and paste the cut text at the proper place. Note that the underscores need to be there (before and after, and between the words).

To make text (one word or a series of words, a phrase)

— bold, flank them with * (asterisks) on both ends, or with <strong> on left and </strong> on right. Strong is an XHTML tag. Note that the b HTML tag is not allowed.

— italics, flank them with / (forward slashes) on both ends, or with <em> on left and </em> on right. em is an XHTML tag. Note that the i HTML tag is not allowed.

— underline, flank them with ~ (tilde) on both ends, or with <span class="underline"> on left and </span> on right. Note that the u HTML tag is not allowed.

— super- or subscripts, flank them with  or  on left and  or  on right.

— different color, flank with <span style="color:red;"> on left and </span> on right.

If you are somewhat familiar with XHTML language, you can format the text to an even greater degree. XHTML codes that are allowed are noted in the 'show help' link in the editing section.

...see this image illustrating the syntax - some of it.

This can be done in two ways - easiest one is to just type in the name of the page. For example, typing in - _Sand_Box_ - automatically makes the word a link. This is because Sand Box is a page on this wiki. (If it was not, you'd see a question mark next to it, clicking which would have let you create that page). Same is true if you type with the underscores (like '_DNAse_treatment_of_RNA_.'), such as What is wiki.

Second way to add a link to another wiki page is to note the URL of that page (http:/...) and then use the 'a' XHTML tag as described below.

If the admin has enabled camel-case linking, then besides the underscore method decribed above to automatically create a wiki page, you can also type in words in camel-case (that is, the first character is in upper-case, next few ones in lower, followed by another character in upper-case, and so on).

Either type the full text of the web page address (http...) by itself or use the XHTML 'a' tags. Thus, a link to CNN website can be added as CNN website - http://www.cnn.com (address just typed out) or as <a href="http://www.cnn.com">CNN website</a>. Once thus edited and saved, the text will be displayed as CNN website - http://www.cnn.com or CNN website.

If using the XHTML 'a' tags, it is very important to note and place the forward slashes and quotation marks properly.

To add an image to a page, edit the page (if needed create it first as described before), and at the proper place, type in the name of the image file (say, example.jpg). Then upload the image file and save the page. JPG, JPEG, PNG and GIF images will automatically be displayed. Other image filetypes will appear as clickable text - clicking will usually lead to an automatic download.

Only certain file types can be uploaded. There is also a size limit. Click the 'show help' link when editing.

As with images, just type in the name of the file - e.g., example.pdf - at the proper place, and upload the file. The filename that you typed in will appear as a clickable text - clicking will lead to a download of the file.

Note that uploading a second file with the same name as an already uploaded one will lead o the deletion of the first file. However, this is not a problem if the first file was uploaded for attachment or display on a separate Wiki page.

To attach very large files, place them in the large_data folder inside the wiki folder in the webserver, and then use an address like - <a href="large_data/filename">filename</a> to refer to it.

Any line containing words that all begin with a capital letter, becomes a heading. There should be atleast two words, and there can be standalone digits/numbers thereafter. The second word may be a capital letter or a character such as round bracket, but not a digit or a word starting with a lower-case letter.

A line beginning in a similar way (but it can have digits) followed by a colon, without space, and then followed by a word becomes an inline heading. Of course, you can use the * for making the text bold. Thus,

This Is An Inline Heading: See this.

will appear as -

This Is An Inline Heading: See this.

A line can consist of many sentences and thus be a paragraph. Lines are started or ended when you press the 'return' or 'enter' key.

A line can be indented by placing spaces at the beginning - 25 pixels per space.

To align a line to the right, left or center, use [left], [right] or [center], followed by a space before the text begins. Note that by default alignment is to the left and thus this need not be specified.

Any line starting with a 'bullet identifier' becomes a line in a list. Bullet identifiers (including numbered and non-numbered) can be mixed-and-matched at will. The bullet identifier needs to be at the very start of the line (excluding spaces) and must be separated by a space from the following text. The supported bullet identifiers are as follows -

 Question Mark (?): Creates a "question item"

 Exclamation Mark (!): Creates an "action item"

— Hyphen (-): Creates a hyphenated line

• Period (.): Creates a bulleted line

1. Number: Creates a numbered line. Any numbered line starting with one resets the list counter. Lines starting with numbers other than one are renumbered as necessary. Likewise, the list counter is reset with every heading.

Text in a wiki page is scanned for several patterns, which automatically produce links of the following types -

— Email addresses and website addresses (URLs) become hyperlinks, as do URLs of the form xxx://xxx@xxx.xxx?xxx

— Any group of words surrounded and separated by underscores (_) becomes a link to a page with its corresponding name, such as Home (with _Home_)

— Any text in camel-case (if this feature is enabled by the administrator)

The following apply within a line.

— Words surrounded by asteriks (*) become bold.

— Words surrounded by forward-slashes (/) become italicized.

— Words surrounded by tildes (~) become underlined.

— Words surrounded by pound-signs (#) are shown as code, monospaced text boxed with broader margins.

— The above rulesand HTML can be freely intermixed, though care must be taken to avoid conflicting with the other automated markup rules.

 Note: To insert HTML code that should be visible to the user, be sure to replace the '' with '<' and '>', respectively,

— Text surrounded by and tags will be ignored by QwikiWiki and passed to the browser without alteration.

 Note: For security reasons, only a subset of HTML tags are allowed in QwikiWiki pages. The specific set allowed is up to the administrator; click Help when editing a page to see the complete list of acceptable HTML tags.

If the administrator has allowed use of the table, td, tr (optionally, th) XHTML tags, you can create tables by using XHTML code.

Thus, this table below is created by typing in code shown below it -

<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>This</td>
<td>is</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>a</td>
<td>table</td>
</tr>
</table>

To display raw, unformatted text, including HTML code, etc., that is not wiki-fied, use [pre] before the block of text and [/pre] after it. They can be on same line, be in the middle of the line, or be on different lines.

If enabled by the wiki administrator, you can upload and "attach" files to each page. Attached files are stored in a page-specific subdirectory, and can be linked to from within the page by simply typing its filename into the page text. If the attached file is an image type (GIF, JPG, PNG, JPEG), it is inserted directly rather than linked to.

 Note: Only certain file types can be attached, as specified by this Wiki's administrator. Click Help when editing a page to see the complete list of acceptable file types.