(Return to The Art And Technique Of Wikis)
Advanced Wiki Editing
Using WikiSpaces
Having trouble with the site? You'll find answers to many common questions here. We also offer a monthly set of tips? for using Wikispaces more effectively. If you don't find an answer here, we're always happy to help: help@wikispaces.com.
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More Advanced Topis
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Spaces
A wikispace is a space of your own typically used for one purpose or devoted to one topic. Each space can hold many pages, files, and images. A wikispace called "peanuts" will live at peanuts.wikispaces.com.
Creating Spaces
To create a new wikispace simply click on "Make a New Space" in the sidebar at the left of your screen under "Actions". You can create as many spaces as you like. There are no limits on how big your spaces can be!
Space Types
Wikispaces offers three types of space: public, protected, and private
Public
A public space can be viewed by anyone and can also be edited by anyone.
Protected
A protected space can be viewed by anyone but can only be edited by members of the space.
Private
A private space can only be viewed or edited by members of the space.
Changing your space type
- In the 'Actions' menu on the left, click 'Manage Space'.
- Under the 'Space Settings' section click 'Members and Permissions'
- In the 'Space Permissions' section click 'Select' for Public, Protected, or Private
Free and Paid Spaces
Public spaces with advertisements are free.
Public spaces without advertisements cost $5 a month or $50 a year.
Protected spaces with advertisements are free.
Protected spaces without advertisements cost $5 a month or $50 a year.
Private spaces never have advertisements and cost $5 a month or $50 a year.
The first 30 days of a paid space are always free.
To remove advertisements from your space:
- In the 'Actions' menu on the left, click 'Manage Space'.
- Under the 'Space Settings' click 'Subscription'
- Click the 'Upgrade' button to upgrade to a Plus space
For more information about our plans and pricing see our pricing page.
Making a Payment
There are three ways to make a Wikispaces payment.
- Recurring Monthly Payment: If you have a PayPal account, you can sign up for a recurring monthly payment and we'll automatically bill you $5 each month.
- Prepay for a Month: You can buy a month of time for your space using a credit card or a PayPal account for $5.
- Prepay for a Year: You can buy year of time for your space using a credit card or a PayPal account for $50.
Once you have upgraded your space you can make any of these types of payments as follows:
- Go to your space
- Select "Manage Space" on the left hand side of any page
- Under "Space Settings" select "Subscription"
- Under "Payment Information" click on one of the three buttons and follow the instructions to complete the forms.
Editing Spaces
There are several changes you can make to your space as a whole.
Changing the space logo
For a space that you've created, you can change our funny little bonsai tree logo as follows:
- In the 'Actions' menu on the left, click 'Manage Space'.
- In the 'Space Settings' section on the page, click 'Look and Feel'
- In the 'Logo' section in the page, click the 'Browse' button
- Browse your hard drive for the image you want to use (jpg, png, or gif, recommended size: 140 x 48 pixels)
- Click the 'Send File' button
Changing the space's background color
For a space that you are an organizer of, you can change the background color as follows:
- In the 'Actions' menu on the left, click 'Manage Space'.
- In the 'Space Settings' section on the page, click 'Look and Feel'
- In the 'Name, Background Color, Description' section in the page, in the "Color #" text field, enter the HTML color code of your desired background color. You can see which codes are for which color here: http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/reference/color_codes/
Changing the space's license
You can change the license for your space as follows:
- In the "Actions" section of the left hand bar, click "Manage Space"
- Under the "Space Settings" section, click on "Name, Description, License".
- Under the "License" section you'll find what you need.
Space Backups
You can backup the most recent copies of the pages in a space as follows:
- In the 'Actions' menu on the left, click 'Manage Space'
- Under 'Space Contents' you can get use the 'Backup Space' buttons to get your space in wikitext format or the 'Export Space as HTML' buttons to get your space in HTML.
- Use the dialog that pops-up to save the archive to your hard drive
Deleting Spaces
If you need a space deleted:
- In the 'Actions' menu on the left, click 'Manage Space'
- Under 'Space Settings' click 'Request Space Deletion'
Or, if you can't login for some reason just email us with the name of the space. Make sure you email us from the email address you registered with so that we know it's you.
Adding members to a space
- Go to your space homepage (e.g. http://yourspace.wikispaces.com/?)
- Click on "Manage Space" under the "Actions" section in the left menu bar.
- Click on "Members and Permissions" under the "Space Settings" section
- Under the "Invite a New Member" section, enter either the Wikispaces username or the Email Address of the person you wish to add to your space. (Note: If you are unsure whether the person you wish to invite already has a Wikispaces account, or if you are unsure what the person's Wikispaces user name is, enter an email address that you know belongs to the person instead.)
- The person you invite will receive an email notification and once they accept, they will be a member of your space.
- You will then be able to manage their membership status on your "Members and Permissions" page.
Space badges
Badges can be used when you want to link from one of your other websites or blogs to your Wikispace.
- Go to your space
- Click "Manage Space" in the left hand side menubar under the "Actions" section
- Click "Space Badges" under the "Space Promotion" section
- Follow the instructions on that page to put any of the three types of badges on your website or blog.
Including your space in the Wikispaces directory
If you want people to be able to find your space in the list of all spaces on Wikispaces:
- Go to your space
- Select "Manage Space" on the left hand side of any page
- Under "Space Settings" select "Look and Feel"
- In the "Name, Background, Color, Description" section" enter a description and click "Update".
Pages
Each wikispace may contain many pages. Each page is a single web page which can contain content and can link to other pages.
Creating Pages
To create a new page within the current space, use the "Make a New Page" link in the sidebar or just create a link to the new page in the editor. When you create a space, you'll start with one blank page called home. Click "edit" to add content to that page.
Note that the "Make a New Page" link will only be present if you are a registered user and have logged in.
Each editable page on Wikispaces has an "edit" button at the top of the page. Click on the "edit" button to bring up the page editor. The page editor allows you to add text and pictures to a page and to format that page. The editor has a visual mode and a plain text mode.
1. What's the visual editor?**
Wikispaces' visual editor lets you see the final look and feel of a page before you save it. It's just like using a word processor. Javascript is required for this editor.
2. What's the text editor?**
3. How do I switch between the two editor modes?**
When in the visual editor, click "Use Text Editor" to switch to text mode. When in the text editor, click "Use Visual Editor" to switch to visual mode. You can set your default editor mode in your Settings page.
4. What's the difference between the 'edit' button and the 'edit navigation' link?**
The edit link at the top of the page edits the page that you are currently viewing. Each page can be thought of as a document within your space. Your documents can be linked together.
The edit navigation link on the left edits the content that appears in the Navigation bar on each page. That content is intended to be sort of an index for the site so that your users can easily move around in the space.
Linking Pages
Creating links between pages is easy in both the visual editor and the plain text editor. In the visual editor, highlight the text you wish to link and click the earth icon in the toolbar to add a new link. In both the visual editor and the plain text editor, you can add a link by enclosing a word in double square brackets.
Several examples of what's possible using square brackets:
You can always make links to other web pages by just typing the url, for example: http://wikispaces.com. To set a different label, the format is similar as the 'About Us' link above: ``Wikispaces``
Locking Pages
Space organizers can lock pages. A locked page cannot be edited by anyone other than a space organizer.
To lock a page in your space:
- Click "Manage Space"
- Click "List Pages"
- Click "lock" next to the page you want to lock.
Printing Pages
To print a page in your space:
- Click "Manage Space"
- Click "List Pages"
- Click "print" next to the page you want to print to bring up a printable view of the page
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- Use your web browser's print function to print the page
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Deleting and Renaming Pages
To delete or rename a page in your space:
- Click "Manage Space"
- Click "List Pages"
- Click "delete" or "rename" next to the page you want to delete or rename.
Page History
Each time someone edits a page, we take a visual snapshot of the changes so you can see in a glance how much has changed. Was it one line or the whole page? Click on 'history' at the top of any page to see all changes. Then click on the screenshot to the left of each entry to see a visual representation of the changes.
You can also compare any two versions of a page by clicking "select for comparison" on one version of a page and then "compare to selected" on another.
We keep every version of every page and make it easy for members to revert back to a previous copy. You'll never have to worry about losing changes or being stuck with a new version of a page if someone makes a mistake.
Reverting Pages
Every time a page is edited on Wikispaces, we save the previous version so that you can go back to a previous version if you don't like the new change. In fact, we save every version of every page on the site.
Reverting a page lets you restore the content on a page that existed at any previous point in time. It's not to be done lightly, but can be very helpful if a page has been vandalized or to undo editing mistakes.
To revert a page:
- click on 'history' on top of the page you want to revert
- select the version you would like to go back to, either by clicking on the changes screenshot image or the 'view this version' link
- click on 'revert' at the top of the page
- enter a comment and click the Revert button
When you revert a page, please enter a comment that explains why you reverted the page. Note that you must be logged in to revert pages.
Including Pictures and Files
You can include pictures and files in your pages easily using the visual editor. When in the visual editor:
- Click the image icon which looks like a tree in a box
- Use the 'Upload New File' or 'External Image URL' dialog to select the image or file you wish to put on your page
- Put the cursor at the position on the page where you wish to put the image or file
- Double click the image or file to put it on the page
You can include pictures in your pages using wikitext by following these instructions?.
Deleting and Renaming Pictures and Files
To delete files and pictures in your space:
- Make sure you are an organizer of the space
- Click "Manage Space"
- Click "List Files"
- Click "delete" or "rename" next to the file you want to delete or rename.
Embedding Media and HTML
When editing any Wikispaces page, you'll see a button on the toolbar that looks like a television. Click it, and paste the HTML from any embeddable web service in the box.
Navigation Bar
On the left side of each page in your space, you'll see a "Navigation" section which you can edit by clicking the "edit navigation" link under the Navigation section.
The content you put on this special page will show up on every page in your space. It's a nice way to have a common menu across all the pages in your space.
It's also just like any other wiki page meaning you can put in links, headings, images, lists - anything that can be on a normal page. The only difference is that bulleted lists will not have bullets displayed in order to preserve space.
Search
To search the space you're currently in, type in your search words in the search box on the top of the page. If you'd like to search all public spaces, click 'search all public spaces' on the search results page.
Advanced Search
Wikispaces supports several operators to help narrow your search results:
|| "exact phrase" || find documents containing the exact phrase in quotes ||
|| +include || only show pages that contain "include" ||
|| -exclude || only show pages that do not contain "exclude" ||
For example, "wildlife observatory" will only return pages with the words "wildlife observatory" in that order. "wikispaces -lovely" will show all pages that contain the word //wikispaces// that do not contain the word //lovely//. "wikispaces +lovely" will show all pages that contain //wikispaces// and do contain the word //lovely//.
Feeds
We support RSS / XML feeds for all of the content on the site. You can get a feed for a single page or discussion area or for all pages and discussion areas in a space.
Space Feeds
To use the feeds for a whole space, click on 'Recent Changes' in the Actions menu and then on 'notify me'.
Page Feeds
To use the feeds for a single page, click on 'details >>' on the top of the page and 'notify me'.
Discussion Areas
Each page has its own discussion area to keep your discussions separate from your wiki pages. You can setup a feed for all messages in a space in order to keep track of all discussion in your community.
Favorites
Want to mark a page for later? Just click the star and it will be saved to your 'My Page' for future reference.
Integrating Blogs
Tags
Tags are like keywords or categories you can apply to a page.
To add a tag to the current page:
- Edit the page by clicking the "Edit this page" button
- Type the tag or tags you want in the text field at the bottom of the edit window called "Optional: tags for this page"
- Click Save
To delete a tag from the current page:
- Edit the page by clicking the "Edit this page" button
- Delete the tag or tags you no longer want in the text field at the bottom of the edit window called "Optional: tags for this page"
- Click Save
To see the tags for the current page:
- Tags will be listed at the bottom of the page
From your "My Page" you can see your list of tags each of which lets you list the pages that you have categorized under that tag.
Internationalization
Wikispaces stores all page and message data in UTF-8. This means that you can build your wiki in nearly any language on earth and it will appear correctly.
1. What characters are allowed in page names?**
Page names may contain letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), spaces, and some punctuation (comma, period, underscore, hyphen, and parentheses). Page names may only contain latin alphabet letters. To create a link to a page with accented characters or other non-latin letters, create the link with a label, e.g. ``Exåmple?``.