This is the entry page used for printouts only (print command in top menu) with the essentials of wikidot.com for absolut beginners.
it is a good idea to read first this section….
This page contains per include the article Wikidot For Beginners and all sub-contents:
Wikidot-For-Beginners
This is the entry page with the essentials of wikidot.com for absolute beginners.
it is a good idea to read first this section….
| Wikdot for beginners |
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| What Is A Wiki Site? Introduction Terms Of Service (Legal issues) What Is A License ? Find A Page Create an account Login At Wikidot Logout from Wikidot Private messaging My_Account Profile settings Join a Wiki Search-engine |
Print of this essential-page: Print version Wikidot For Beginners
Include-command used: Include Wikidot For Beginners
Backlinks:
what-is-a-wiki-site
According to Wikipedia, the world's largest wiki site:
A Wiki ([ˈwiː.kiː] <wee-kee> or [ˈwɪ.kiː] <wick-ey>) is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most content very quickly and easily.
And that is it! As a part of Wikidot.com network this site is a customizable piece of the Internet where users can edit content, upload files, communicate and collaborate.
The following article was copied from the community site:
http://community.wikidot.com/what-is-a-wiki-site
Traditional static websites often do not allow you to do much more than to read the content, contribute to a forum, email comments to the site owner or buy things.
But a wiki is different; it is a type of website that allows some or all visitors to the site to add, remove and change pages and content very quickly and easily.
Wikis Reduce E-mail. The ability of groups to collectively edit and develop documents can save hundreds of back-and-forth emails as shown in the image below:
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| This wiki/email comparison image was originally produced by Manny Wilson in June 2007 for a presentation to senior leadership at the United States Central Command to demonstrate how wikis could be used to more rapidly draft contingency plans. |
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One advantage of a wiki over a traditional website is that the responsibility for making changes doesn't rest with just one person, it becomes a group resource and everyone has a stake in it and a contribution to make. Making changes and adding content can become quite addictive and good fun.
Where did wikis come from?
The name "Wiki" was inspired by the Hawaiian word wiki or wiki-wiki, which means "quick". The first wiki was developed in 1995 by an American, Ward Cunningham, who wanted an alternative to the word "quick" for his product that would allow quick, collaborative editing. He remembered the wiki-wiki shuttle buses that run between terminals at Honolulu International Airport and the name stuck.
Who uses wikis?
Wikis are now used extensively in education for classwork, assignments, and projects. Many community groups also use wikis to enable local residents to promote their town or village as a group without one person always having the responsibility of keeping it up to date.
In business, wikis are now used by many of the world's most innovative companies for team collaboration, co-authoring of documents (it avoids long email chains and makes collaboration much easier), knowledge management and intranets, event planning, contact with customers and for project work.
What are wikis used for?
Some uses that we have seen are shown below:
- to co-author documents
- to draft and maintain manuals
- as a knowledge base
- to develop an intranet or extranet
- to communicate initiatives
- to display static or dynamic information
- to display frequently-asked-questions (FAQs)
- to facilitate online discussions of topics
- to gather requirements
- to store college notes
- to gather sources of information in one place accessible from anywhere
- for team communication
- to log client work
- to log clients and contacts
- to log bugs in software development
- to organize and manage projects
- to organize events
- to publish articles
- to publish checklists
- to publish reference documentation
- to record meeting notes
- to record team or organization goals
- to solve problems remotely
- to track deadlines
- to track invoices
- for brainstorming and mindmapping
- to create to-do lists
- for conversation logs
- for record-keeping
- for diaries
- to create research notes
- to plan and write novels
- …and lots more
Authors
This article was copied from the community site:
http://community.wikidot.com/what-is-a-wiki-site
and created by RobElliott - thanks to him!
Introduction
This section contains the overview about Wikidot's network, browsers, users, roles, accounts, and sites.
All links open in an extra window.
What is Wikidot
Have a look on the explanation on http://www.wikidot.com/what-is-wiki
Typical general questions about Wikidot: http://www.wikidot.com/faq:general-questions
Browser Requirements
Here is the starting point: http://www.wikidot.com/doc:browser-requirements
Technical answers: http://www.wikidot.com/faq:technical
Users
User—their roles and permissions: http://www.wikidot.com/doc:users
User—their accounts: http://www.wikidot.com/faq:user-accounts
Sites
Site Features and Managing Sites: http://www.wikidot.com/faq:site-features
Editing pages:
An overview and some answers about Editing: http://www.wikidot.com/faq:editing-pages
terms-of-service
[[include http://www.wikidot.com/legal:terms-of-service]]
What-Is-A-License
This article is meant as a general introduction to licenses. As the specific laws will vary from place to place and given the fact that the author is not a lawyer, please do not consider this legal advice.
Thanks to hartnell for his words here, the founder of Game Design Novice - a typical Wikidot Site created from him with the free Wikidot software - it is Open Source!
What is a License?
In amateur game programming and design you hear about licenses all the time, especially when games and resources are distributed across the internet. In fact, even the text of and resources provided by Game Design Novice, are available under the terms of a license. What are these things, that we call licenses? What use are they? Do you really need one? This article will answer those questions.
Copyright
Before there can be a license, there must be copyright. Someone must own the rights to something. This is very important. Because if someone doesn't own the copyright, the material in question is public domain and therefore no license is needed.
Copyright, of course, is the legal right to control your work. Many people believe that copyright is the right to "profit" from your work. While this is certainly part of it, you can't profit from your work if you cannot control it. If anyone, anywhere, at anytime can copy your work, there is no reason for anyone to pay for it, they can just copy it.
Therefore, copyright gives you the legal right to determine who can and cannot make copies of your work.
The End User License
Whenever you buy and install software, you agree to what is commonly titled "The End User License". When you buy Adobe Photoshop or any other commercial software, you do not actually own the software. You do, however, own the CD that it came on. However, the program itself still belongs to the company who owns the copyright. The End User License gives you permission to use that software under certain conditions, assuming that you have paid for the permission to use it. The most common conditions of use under an End User License are:
- That you only use the software on one computer. After all, that's all you've paid to get permission for.
- That you do not make copies of it.
- That you do not hold the company responsible for any damages the software does.
The Group License
With an End User License it is assumed that one person has paid for permission to make one copy of the software. This copy is not necessarily a back-up copy and such laws are not discussed in this article. Instead, you must realize that when you install the software, you are making a copy of it. The copy is from CD to your computer.
The Group License is an option with many software packages and helps us illustrate the "permission" aspect of licenses. A group license grants further permission for the software to be copied on more than one computer. Often the limit is based on a finite limit (say 5) of computers, or all of the computers at a location (at one school). Naturally, since you are buying more instances of permission with a Group License, it costs quite a bit more.
Copyleft
The above two sections describe how a copyright holder sells permission to people who want to use their work. The permission, and the terms for gaining that permission, are encompassed in the license. But what if someone wants to retain copyright over a work and doesn't want money for someone to use it? What if they do not even care if someone asks for permission in the traditional sense (buying a product, or a friendly email)? Enter Copyleft.
A copyleft license such as a Creative Commons license or a GNU license gives permission for someone to use a copyrighted work under simple and easy to understand conditions without the exchange of money. For example, Game Design Novice is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. Under this license, you are allowed to use anything you see here (unless stated otherwise) for any reason as long as you follow one condition: you attribute the work to "The Game Designers of Game Design Novice" and link to the page you got it from.
In short, since money is not involved, and work is used more or less freely, Creative Commons and GNU licenses are a way for an author to get credit. In fact, if someone decides to use your work without following your conditions, there's nothing you can do about it without spending a large amount of money on lawyers. Here, in the Copyleft world, we tend to work on an honor system.
How to set and choose the license for your wiki
Go to your site manager yoursite.wikidot.com/admin:manage.
You can set different licenses for different categories of pages.
You will get a page with following content:
It is very important to clarify the copyright and ownership issues for your site. We highly recommend setting an open "copyleft" license that allows making the Content more or less free to copy, modify and use.
This is particularly important when your Site is created and edited collaboratively.
Read more about Creative Commons licenses, use a wizard to select the proper license or just visit Creative Commons.
Choose the category (typical example list here):
- _default
- admin
- css
- forum
- nav
- system
or set Inherit from "_default" for the others..
Choose the license:
( see list next paragraph)
Licenses supported
(copied from Site manager)
- Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License (recommended)
- Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
- Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 License
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License
- Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.5
- Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
- Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives 2.5
- Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 2.5
- Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike 2.5
- Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 2.5
- GNU Free Documentation License 1.2
- Standard copyright (not recommended)
- Other: Custom license text: (max 300 characters ) - A few HTML tags are allowed: <a>, <img/>, <br/>, <strong>, <em>
Wikidot Terms of Service
Licences are part of Wikidot Terms of Service (TOS)
which can be read at http://www.wikidot.com/legal:terms-of-service
Conclusion
And there you have it, the bare minimum you need to know about licenses.
You will find the chosen license on a wikidot.com site as the last line at the bottom of any page! Have a look and you will find here:
"Unless stated otherwise Content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License"
ToDo
Adapt the text specifically to wiki edition …
gerdami
Find-A-Page
You have some ways to find a page in a site:
1. Search for any text
On the right top of your wikidot page you will find the search box where you can enter any text to search in the site (forum and/or pages). If the site uses a custom "theme" different to the used one in the community then you will find this "search box" perhaps on another location.
You will get a list of all pages (and/or forum threads) with such text in its content.
2. Module Pages used
If it is present you can use the menu point "List all pages" to show all pages in the site.
Or if not possible You can create ( or edit) any page to include following module-line(s):
[[module Pages preview="true" details="true" category="en" ]]
Notes:
Category="en" for the English pages of this wiki. Omitting a category is equivalent to category="_default" for the "standard" pages (there are other categories available on the site manager/permissions menu) ;
preview=true includes the first lines of the text;
details=true includes the last Editor, revision number and update date/time.
You will get some lists like this one (real time , means the list is from now, this moment !):
| Watching Changes | rev. 5 | 08 Jul 2011 14:00 |
| What Is A License ? | rev. 22 | 21 May 2015 07:17 |
| What Is A Wiki Site | rev. 6 | 04 Nov 2019 17:18 |
| WhoInvited Module | rev. 1 | 10 Feb 2011 13:45 |
| Wiki Syntax | rev. 14 | 28 Jul 2010 13:28 |
| Wikidot Api | rev. 1 | 31 Jan 2011 19:05 |
| Wikidot For Beginners | rev. 69 | 23 Oct 2023 08:35 |
| Wikidot For Beginners Print | rev. 16 | 23 Oct 2023 08:31 |
| Wikidot For Beginners Test | rev. 12 | 28 Sep 2023 12:42 |
| www | rev. 1 | 11 Aug 2010 13:23 |
| X | rev. 1 | 13 Jan 2012 15:18 |
| Y | rev. 1 | 13 Jan 2012 15:19 |
Create-An-Account
This page describes how you can create an account on Wikidot.com.
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Table of Contents
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1. Create account button
If you have not yet created an account on Wikidot.com you need to use the link-button create account at the right-top of your wikidot screen. Here is what it looks like:
2. Create account
When you click on this button-link, the "Create Account" window opens. Here you will need to fill in some important details:
- a good unique user-id (your "screen name", unique inside the wikidot.com network).
- a valid mail-adress where the system can send the acknowledgment (this email requires a response from you for security purposes).
- a decision on which language you prefer to use (right now, the choices are English or Polish, and all 80% translated languages from the "Translate" wiki). This choice only affects the internal pages within the wikis you create.
- a good password for security.
- a repeat of this good password
- and good eyes to answer a security question to protect the wikidot system from evvvvvil robots.
Finally, you klick on the "I accept the…." link button and aggree to the Terms of Service of wikidot.com.
3. Verification of Your Email-adress !
After clicking on this "Acceptance" button You will get a verification Email to your address - PLEASE WAIT for this!
In this Email is a link to click on - You make an acknowledgement to Wikidot - that YOUR Email-Adresse belongs to your User-ID.
If you do not get this email in some 5 -10 min than check
- if your email-address is written wrong
- if your email-box is full
- if the mail has landed in the spam folder
- could be the wikidot server is overloaded and needs more time - please wait or try again later.
We know from problems with hotmail addresses - if you do not get any email please mesage us!
4. my_account
Congratulations! You now have a wikidot account. Now you should see the "your account" buttons at the right-top of the wikidot screen changes to a personal account_menu:
An important reminder:
- Your my account menu button leads you to your personal Account settings; it is a good idea to set up those settings right off. Just follow the link!
- The little square box to the right of your account name ("screen name") up in the right hand corner of the screen is a pull-down/"hidden" menu where you can logout from wikidot.com: Logout from Wikidot
Login-At-Wikidot
This page descibes how you can login to the overall wikidot community site. (Note that other individual wiki sites hosted on wikidot may require you to be logged in to collaborate or read. The process to login is the same, but depending on how the owner of that wiki has configured their site, you may not have permissions to do so on their wiki site.)
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Table of Contents
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1. Login button
You will find a login button on the top right of your browser screen:
2. Create account
If you don't have an account on wikidot.com, you should click Create_account and follow the instructions to create an account. For this you will need:
- a unique user id (unique inside the wikidot.com network) and
- a valid email address where the system can send you acknowledgement emails.
3. Sign_on
Once you have created an account on wikidot.com, you can login to the overall wikidot community site. You will need to enter your email address and password:
Notes for the checkboxes:
Sign me out… — The system make automatically a signout if you make login from another IP adress.
4. My Account
After you login, you will see your personal account menu at the top right of your screen:
- From here you can select my account which will take you to your personal account settings.
- The dropdown menu (which you can access by clicking the arrow) will allow you to log out.
If this is your first login, you may want to edit your profile on my_account. This is optional.
Logout-From-Wikidot
This document explains how to logout / logoff from Wikidot.com and shows a little short-hand menu hidden at a little icon right from your "my_account" link at the top right side of the page.
If You are logged in with Your User Id You will find at the top right side (right from the page link "my_acount") a little icon (normally a little DownArrow, but in Internet Explorer 7 it is a little button);
if You click on this icon a small pull-down menu will open with some short-hand and at the end the "logout" link:
If You want You can logoff / logout with this link and can leave the WIKIDOT.page.listeners ….
I for my own have not seen this little menu-icon for a long time - and made no logout therefore.. :)
Text ( and images ) derived from: http://community.wikidot.com/howto:logout-from-wikidot
text and images from gerdami
Edit-Your-Profile
**This page is outdated and replaced by en:my_account
my_account_settings-about-profil.jpg
Your profile page is what another user sees when they click on your user icon. The user profiles are stored on a separate wiki : http://profiles.wikidot.com. However, you can access and edit your profile from your Account Settings page. Here's how to do it :
1. Click on the link my account at the top of any page. This will take you to your Account Settings page.
2. In the left nav bar, click on the My Profile link near the bottom. This will take you to your My Profile page.
3. Click on the Edit a page about myself link. This will take you to your User Profile page.
4. You can edit this page like any other wiki page. Changes to this page will be reflected on your profile. If you need to know how to edit a page, see edit-a-page.
5. Remember that your profile is user specific, not wiki specific. That means that no matter how many wikis you have, your user profile will stay the same. Try to keep your profile information generalized so matter what wiki a person is on when they look at your profile, it will make sense! Unless of course you only have one wiki and that is all you ever plan to have (not likely, because as we've said before, wikidot is addictive!).
Join-a-Wiki
Members of a wiki-site can have more rights than anonymous or registered users on wikidot. This depends on the setup of the permissions in the Site manager.
There are four ways to join a Wikidot wiki. (Note, if you start a wiki, you are already the admin of that wiki). By application, by password, by being invited, or by using the Join button. Before you can join any wikidot wiki, you first must have joined wikidot itself and have a wikidot account.
By Invitation
If you know the person who owns the wiki, they may invite you. If this happens, you will receive a notification that pops up on the next wikidot page you load. To accept the invitation, simply press the "Accept Invitation" button.
There is a link-button right from this "accept invitation" where you can refuse this invitation. I had never such an experience but technically this is possible.
This invitation is possible over e-mail too, if you have never heard from wikidot and the inviting site. Then you have to follow the link in the e-mail and (in most cases) have to create an account.
By Application
On the page "Join this site" or sometimes on the welcome page their is the posssibility to apply for admission - if the admins have allowed this. In this case you should have an account on wikidot (if you are an anonymous than the "Join this site" screen changes to the "Login/ Create an account" ) and type in a short text with your applyment for admission. Do not forget to click on the Apply-Button!
By Password
An admin can install a "general" password in the Site manager / members / policy page and allow the use of it. If you got such password (by mail or private message) you have the allowance to join the site as a member and can type this pasword here to get the entrance. Once you are a member of a site you will not need this password again to join.
Join Button
If the wiki administrator has set their site's access policy to be 'open' and has added a Join button to one of their pages, you can click this button and instantly become a member.
If you are not logged into a Wikidot account, it will even take you through the steps of creating one! :)
