Quickstart

This article is the guideline one should consider when (s)he is editing this wiki. It will not go into detail on the basic usage of a (or this) wiki but only on the rules of content creation at the IPFire wiki.

There are users who like to create or edit articles in this wiki. Often one doesn't know for shure how such an article should look like. The purpose of this article is to be a self-explanatory reference for your own article to create or edit. Basically here you shall get the idea what to consider when it comes to the formal structure of your article. So this paragraph is an introductional explanation on what this article is about - something that should precede everey article. (1)

How does it work? Where do I find things? I don't know how to do that! Someone surely will be confronted with these questions. Even this article isn't meant to give a complete set of instructions to that. However this article links to other articles at this wiki which contain all information required for article creation and editing and also give reasons why those rules make sense. Without reading those other articles, referenced in the “Things to know” box preceding this article, understanding this article entirely won't be possible, unfortunately. A good article should always point out its limits and describe not just the information contained in that article, but also what information the article doesn't contain.

There are some important functions this wiki provides for formatting text consitently and appealingly. A good article sticks to the following guidelines:

To explain specific facts or solutions to a problem it's often necessary to resort to further knowledge of other things. However it doesn't make sense to repeat instructions which already exist in another article, since the same information would have to be maintained in multiple locations.

You shall indicate which knowledge you assume the reader of your article to have in a “Things to know” box preceding your actual article. This way you only have to create links to the appropriate articles, your article will stick to its essential information and retain its clarity. Additionally you can reference to the prior enlisted articles on “Things to know” by linking to them in your text labeled by its number like this (2). In this article you will also find such references.

Besides the guidelines concerning content (1) inside the actual text there are other things to consider when making your text more accessible and easier to understand. Therefore the following formatting shall be used:

To make certain text really stand out there are several different kinds of text boxes. Please use boxes only for their appropriate use to keep your article accessible.

A simple box is a code container.

# A common usage would be quoting of a files content.
# This may be a configuration file, for example.
foo  =  bar

# Note that whitespaces are preserved!

Another common type of box is the note box. These are more graphically intense, and are for things intended to stand out for their importance.

Sometimes it's a good idea to add pictures to your article (eg. screenshots), because sometimes a picture can really help the reader understand an explanation. Please consider the size of pictures you put into your article and allow the Wiki to resize them if they're too big, especially when handling screenshots. Also please use PNG or JPG as filetype for pictures.

Much like a good book or movie, a good article ends with references to further information or a forecast of upcoming articles.

• If you don't feel entirely fit for editing this wiki right now it's no problem. No one will complain so don't let it hold you back. You may just get started and let your confidence rise as your experience does. After all this is a community and others will help you get started, too. Just check out the forums.
• When editing an article it's getting locked for editing by another person than you to reduce the risk conflicts by having multiple people editing (and eventually saving their version) of the same article at the same time. However this lock expires after a certain amount of time. You will get notified before that happens if you still have the editing page opened. Be aware that hitting the Preview button in the editor refreshes the lock.
• If you don't know exactly how to type certain mark-up so it looks the way you want it to, just edit another article which has the desired figure in it and copy the mark-up from its source. When doing so, please leave the editor of the other article by clicking on Cancel, so as to not save any accidental changes or leave the article locked for editing.

If you don't have a lot of links you don't have to categorize them.

• Homepage of this wiki
• Join the Project
• Information on the usage of this wiki

• Project homepage
• Forums