EK Wiki, ye saga continues!

In a previous post, I talked about how to create a page on the East Kingdom wiki site. In this post, I’d like to talk about some advanced topics for spicing up your entry, as well as where to find some cool info on the wiki.

Last time we talked about bullet points. How can I do other fancy formatting?

You can show text in italics by putting double apostrophes on either side of the text to be formatted. For example:

Lorem ipsum dolor ''this text in italics'' sit amet....

… will return:

Lorem ipsum dolor this text in italics sit amet…

Some more formatting options:

Three apostrophes each side will '''bold the text'''.

Five consecutive apostrophes on each side (two for italics plus three for bold) produces '''''bold italics'''''.

:Each colon at the start of a line
::causes the line to be indented by three more character positions.

#create an ordered list
#using number signs at the start of each line

returns:

Your last post mentioned photo galleries. How do I create one of those on my page?

Really easy! First of all, upload your photos to the site. If you need help uploading a photo file, see this page for help: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/index.php?title=Help:Add_a_Picture

Then, on your wiki page, set up a section like this:

<gallery>
File:ImageNumber1.jpg|Caption for ImageNumber1.jpg
File:ImageNumber2.jpg|Caption for ImageNumber2.jpg
(repeat for however many files you have)
</gallery>

And, you’ll get something that looks like this:

I need a special letter but I can’t figure out how to get it from my keyboard!

If your computer isn’t set to handle non-US keyboards and you need the odd letter, you can use these codes to generate them:

For example, to get the word “Frére”, you would use the code (note the & and ; to indicate the start and end of the HTML reference):

Frére

However, this set is a bit limited in size and doesn’t include some characters used in Icelandic/Anglo-Saxon, for example. So, another easy option is, if you already have a document or webpage that includes the character you need, you can copy and paste those characters into your wiki page. Check out wikipedia’s pages on various languages’ orthography, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Latin_alphabet, as sources.

How can I help others figure out how to pronounce my persona’s name?

I specifically added a section to my page to address this need, given that most people aren’t familiar with Russian pronunciation patterns. Note the italics and bold italics formatting – each section has a beginning and ending set of apostrophes according to the formatting needed.

== Pronunciation ==
''ih''-'''''VAHN''''' ''mat''-'''''FEY'''''-''itch rih''-'''''ZAHN'''''-''skee''

which renders as:

How can I make it easier for others to find my page by my mundane (or alternate) name?

Your wiki page is named by your approved SCA name. This makes it easy to find you if someone knows your official name, but if they only know you by a nickname or by your mundane name, that can make your page hard to find. This can also be helpful if you go through a few names before you settle on your registered name.

The easiest way to do this is to add a section to your wiki page that lists your mundane and/or alternate names/spellings:

== Modern Secret Identity ==
John Beebe, Merrimac, MA

Then when folks search by your alternate name, it will come up as a “Page Text Match” on the search results page.

There is another method called redirects, which allow a search result for one term to automatically redirect the user to another page. But, those are more complicated, so we’ll reserve that topic for another day.

I accidentally created a new page / uploaded an image that I want to delete. How do I do this stuff?

For good reason, not all users are able to do everything on the site. Some activities like deleting or renaming pages require assistance from your friendly neighborhood admins. You can find this support team and their contact information on the wiki here:

https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/index.php?title=Main_Page#Wiki_Support_Team

What other kinds of fun stuff can I find on the wiki?

The wiki has dozens of articles on various topics, from Recommending Someone for an Award, to Advice for Choosing an SCA Name. All of the articles are indexed and can be found on the Articles category page: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/index.php?title=Category:Articles

There is a list of all the kingdom awards, and information about each one. The full list can be found here: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/index.php?title=Awards

The page has the list of all of the reigns in the EK, their coronation dates, and links to the royals’ persona pages, found here: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/index.php?title=Royals

A similar listing also exists for the history of territorial Barons and Baronesses: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/index.php?title=Baronage

And, you can find the text to a number of poems and songs about the East and the SCA here: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/index.php?title=Category:Poems_and_Songs

Look around, there’s lots of fun stuff to find!