This web site is implemented as a wiki. A wiki is a system where users can edit existing web pages and add new web pages from with their web browser. Web pages are easily authored using a simplified wiki syntax rather than HTML. The wiki is based on the DokuWiki system as well as a number of add-ons which provide additional capability.

Web pages are easily authored using plain text and edited from within your web browser. Dokuwiki supports a number of editing features such as:

• Headings and Subheadings
• Bold, italic, and underline formatting
• Bullet Lists
• Numbered Lists
• Tables
• Links to other wiki pages
• Links to external web pages
• Pictures and other embedded multimedia

Before being able to edit a page or create a new one you must log in to the wiki system. The login link is kind of small. It can be found near the top right corner of the page. Click on “Login” and then provide your wiki username and password. If you don't have a wiki username and password contact the web administrator.

Once you are logged in you can navigate around to the various wiki pages in the usual fashion. To edit an existing page navigate to that page and then click on the “Edit this page” link near the bottom of the page. If the page is divided into subsections then there may be an “Edit” buttons in each section. You can click on this “Edit” button but you will only be able to edit text in that one section. If you would like to have access to the whole page (usually the case) then click on the “Edit this page” link at the very bottom of the page. Again, the link is small and easy to miss. Keep in mind if you don't see the “Edit this page” link then you probably aren't logged in. Clicking on this link opens the wiki source in an editor.

Here are some important things to keep in mind as you edit a page…

• The wiki source that you edit is just plain text. This is not Microsoft Word. It is not What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). A word that is underlined won't show up in the editor underlined. Instead it will look like “__underlined__”.
• You can't mess up. Old version of edited pages are retained for a year. Previous revisions to a page can be listed by clicking on the “Old revisions” link near the bottom of the page. If the worst happens you can always go back to a previous revision.
• A description of the basic syntax for editing wiki pages can be found on the wiki syntax help page.
• There are plug-ins that extend the functionality of the wiki syntax. One popular plug-in that is used by the wiki is the WRAP plug-in. The WRAP plug-in significantly extends the formatting capability of the wiki. There is a link to the WRAP documentation as well as links to documentation for other plug-ins near the bottom of the wiki syntax help page. It is easy to miss these links to important additional syntax documentation.
• The editor has buttons near the top to help with formatting. These buttons are a handy aid but aren't required to format text. The bold button “B” does nothing more than insert pairs of asterisks to surround the text to be rendered bold. You can easily type these asterisks by hand if you like.

Here are a few formatting basics to get you started…

• Separate paragraphs are created by putting a blank line between paragraphs.
• Pages (like this one!) usually have headings and subheadings. Usually start a page with a headline at Headline Level 1. This is a line of text enclosed in 12 '=' signs (six before the text and six after). Later on the page if there is a headline at the same level then also enclose that headline in 12 '=' signs. If, on the other hand, the next heading is a subheading then remove one '=' sign from each side of the headline text. Five levels of headings and subheadings are supported.
• Links to other wiki pages are inserted into the text by surrounding the page name with double square brackets like this “[[wiki_page_name]]”. You will usually want to use some other words besides the wiki page name as the link. In this case include the words to use like this “[[wiki_page_name|Wiki page of interest]]”. Look at the syntax documentation for the various ways to create links.

The easiest way to create a new page is to insert a link to it from an existing page. Once you click on the link and travel to the empty page you will be given the chance to create and edit it. Be sure to give new page a descriptive name.

Individual web pages as well as groups of web pages in a given namespace can be made public or access can be restricted to specific users who must log in. Logged in users can be restricted to read-only access or give read and write access.