Resources - Mediawiki Basics

Purpose
This page is intended to help you learn the basics of MediaWiki - the tools you need to create & navigate wiki pages. This page contains references for typing Wikitext, creating tables, and embedding visual files within a wiki page. For a far more comprehensive and detailed guide covering edge cases, visit the MediaWiki Help Page

Text Formatting
When creating stylized text, type the following characters as desired:
 * Italics - Type two apostrophes surrounding the text to be italicized. Like this
 * Boldface - Type three apostrophes surrounding the text to be bolded. Like this
 * Bolded Italics - Type five apostrophes surrounding the text to be italicized. Like this
 * For typing special characters that may be misinterpreted by the wiki page, such as square braces [], or when trying to explain how other functions should be typed, we should use the nowiki function to denote that our text shouldn't be converted, but left as-is. To use the nowiki function, type Text to be left alone
 * Other functions and special characters may be found on the table here: Wikitext Formatting

Embedding Links
Links allow users of the wiki to quickly navigate between pages, and simply clicking a link will take you to its destination webpage. To embed links within text, specific rules have to be followed. A link is denoted by square braces "[]", with the entirety of the link placed inside. By default, links inside of braces will have their entire URL displayed. We can give a title or name to our link by adding a single space after the URL, followed by the title we wish to give our link. For example, if you wanted to create a link titled 'HRT' that links to our homepage, you would type: HRT

Spaces are allowed in the title of a link so creating the following link & title is just as valid: Husky Robotics Team Homepage

Embedding Images
The first step for embedding images into a MediaWiki page is to upload them to the Wikimedia commons, a pool of imagery resources that may be accessed by any person creating or modifying a wiki page on Wikipedia or any of its sister sites. It is required that you make a Wikimedia Commons account to upload images, and you may upload any image so long as it isn't copyrighted. A automated form for uploading images to Wikimedia can be found here. Once the image is uploaded, the HRT wiki can now gain access to the image via the markup lines below:

The basic markup for adding an image into a webpage is: If we wish to instead embed a video into a webpage, we use: These statements may at first seem intimidating, but aren't too bad in reality. The first set of statements in these lines of code are mandatory.

The 'File:' prefix simply comes before the name of the file to be embedded. It denotes that the following text is the name of a file. The 'Example.jpg' statement is the filename that we're uploading. This tells the wiki page what kind of image or video we're uploading.

The secondary set of statements in these lines of code are optional.

The thumb/frame statements allow us to dictate whether we'd like our image to be scaled down to a thumbnail or left as a full-sized image. We simply type either 'thumb' or 'frame' into the line of code and the wiki does the rest. The 'caption text' statement works as expected - it creates a caption directly underneath our image. If we'd like to shift our image to the right, left, or center of the page, we may type 'right', 'left', 'center', or 'none' in place of the word alignment. The 'center' and 'none' options don't allow for text wrapping - meaning that the image will create a split in your block of text.
 * Thumb scales down the image to 200 x 220 pixels.
 * Frame keeps the image at full size.

For example, here I have uploaded an image of a Husky using the following line of text:



A common desire may be to place two images side-by-side, either horizontally or vertically. The following link has an excellent explanation of how to do so. Additionally, for more information on embedding images, such as how to create manual text-wrapping rules and other shenanigans, visit: Visual File Markup

Creating Tables
Tables are a bit of a doozy. Tables require lots of syntax to function properly, and can be finnicky even when written correctly.

To begin creating a table, we type the following statement:  {|class = "wikitable" , which tells the wiki that we're creating an object on the page of the type "wikitable".

The next line consists of: |+ Caption text, wherein we may give our table a title. We only ever use the statement |+ between the start of our table & the first row.

The statement: |- denotes a new row in our table. We should type this statement after our caption statement and before each new row is added to our table.

To insert data into the cells of our table, we should type the statement: | Example1 || Example2 || Example3 ||... The double bars || indicate that we're moving between cells in a row. The single bar | deontes that we're entering data into a row's cells.

If we wish to include a header for our table, we may type the statement: '''! Header1 !! Header2 !! Header3 !!...''' Where the exclamation points replace the vertical bars in our code.

To end a table, after the last line of data has been entered, we close our table by typing the statement on it's own line of code: |}

So all in all, an example table would look like:

If you're having trouble understanding this guide or seeking additional information about tables, another, more comprehensive guide with far better graphics exists here.