How To Contribute

These web pages are a Wiki, which means they can be edited by anybody. You don't need any special software, you don't need to sign in, and you don't even need to be an Options member.

How It Works

Each page has an edit link at the bottom of the page. To edit this page, click the edit link, and then make whatever changes you want. Its as easy as that.

If you want to try editing a fake page, before editing the real pages, then go to the Fake Page, and edit that!

Linking to Another Page

Making a link to another wiki page is dead easy, just put the name of the page in square brackets. For example, to link to a page called "test", you could write :

Have a look at the [Test] page.

and it would look like this :

Have a look at the Test page.

Creating New Pages

Lets say you want to create a new page to shout about the wonderful party that you hosted. The first thing you need to do is decide how people will get to your new page (from an existing page). In this example, you'll want a link from the Past Events page.

Next you'll need to decide on a name for the new page, for this example, lets call it New Year Party 2006.

To create the new page, first go to the Past Events page, and begin editing it (using the edit link at the bottom right of the page. Now add a link to your page - its quite easy, just type the name of your new page with square brackets around it. i.e. [New Year Party 2006], and then click the save button. Rather than just the name of the page, you might want some additional text, for example :

See what Nick got up to at the [New Year Party 2006].

it will appear like this :

See what Nick got up to at the New Year Party 2006.

That's the trickiest part done - pretty easy really :-)

After clicking "save" you should see your shiney new link. So you've created the link to the page, but how do you create the page itself. Easy, just click the link.

Try it Now

If you haven't edited any pages yet, do it now, the rest of this page is for more experienced users only. Still unsure? Then go to the Fake Page now, click edit and see what happens, you can't do any harm!

Hint : You might like to print out this page, and the Edit Help page, so you can still see the instructions while editing pages.

If you have any problems, feel free to e-mail me (Nick Robinson) for help.

Adding Photos

This is the trickiest part of creating wiki pages. Each step is pretty easy, but there are a few steps, so you might want to make yourself a cup of tea first.

To add a photo to a page, you need to do two things :

1. Specify where the photo should appear
2. Upload the photo

Specify Where the Photo Should Appear

Lets say we want to include a photo of a cup at the top of the Fake Page. The first thing to do is go to the Fake Page, and click the edit link at the bottom of the page.

Add the follow wiki code :

{{image( page="Mug.jpg" )}}

And then click save.

Yes its a little complicated, what with the curly brackets, the round brackets, quotes make an what-not, but don't panic, because whenever you edit a page, there is a friendly reminder at the bottom of the yellow box. You may find it useful to copy and paste the example using the shortcut keys ctrl+C (copy) and ctrl+V (paste).

Now you should see a green link, labelled "Mug.jpg". You won't see an image yet because you haven't uploaded it yet!

Upload the Photo

To upload the photo, click the "Mug.jpg" link that you just made.

Now you should see a button that says Browse. Click Browse, and then select the image from your computer that you want to upload.

Optionally, you can add some additional text about the image. For example, you may want to include who took the photo, the date and location etc.

Now click "Save".

Adding Shadows to Photos

Want to add a nice drop shadow? Its dead easy, instead of this :

{{image( page="Mug.jpg" )}}

Use this instead :

{{shadow( page="Mug.jpg" )}}

That's it, the drop shadow will be added for you. Also, the photo will be scaled down to fit nicely on the page. That means that if you have a whopper of a photo, you don't need to scale it manually before uploading it. I recommend that you always use shadow rather than image.