Manual:Edit pages

Every existing Wiki-article should be modifiable. You simply switch into edit mode, change the contents in the article and save it. It's that simple! Beside that there are some optional functions, which make working in a wiki easier. Edit

Enable edit mode

To change edit an article, you first need to switch into the edit mode. There are two options:

Screenshot: Tab for "edit article"

1. With the link Edit at the top of every page you can modify the article you are reading right now. After clicking a box of text appears with the complete content of the page in the so called wiki-syntax (normal text with format commands).

Screenshot: edit paragraph

2. Even easier to use are the edit links which are next to the headlines. The text has to be formatted as headline. With those every section can be edited individually. You save time to find the relevant part in the textbox and can modify right away.

Editing

existing page, click the "edit" button.

Editing

You can now add and change content in the content area of the page.

Most users will edit page content using the VisualEditor toolbar. VisualEditor has many features that make page editing much easier.

However, special pages such as templates are edited directly in the source text. Therefore, a knowledge of the Wikitext syntax is necessary for these pages.

Preview

In the edit box you can now modify the article at will, add new or change existing. Above the edit zone an edit toolbar offers several buttons of the most used Wiki-syntax commands to click. Beside the Wikisyntax you can also work with the WYSIWYG-Editor; then you don’t need the Wiki-toolbar. On the very left side at the top you can find the button to switch to the WYSIWYG-Editor.

Screenshot: Edit tab in the Wikicode

Preview

With the button Show Preview you can verify if your changes show up to your request. If you scroll down you can still see the edit box. So you can change the article little by little, test it and correct it. When you have finished click save. If you keep saving every time you make minor changes this will lead to large entries in the versions history of the article. That’s not always useful. The function SaferEdit saves the article automatically while you are editing at predetermined intervals – so no need to worry, you won’t lose your edits.

Case study

Edit mode problem

With the Preview button, you can check if you really want to save your changes. This way, you can gradually test small changes. Saving the page repeatedly after small editing steps will result in a large amount of entries in the article's version history. That does not always make sense.

The function SaferEdit automatically saves intermediate versions at defined time intervals while editing an article so that content is not lost if a page has not been saved for a while.

Elements of the "save" dialog

To save the page, click the "Save changes" button. The corresponding dialog window opens:

The following elements are part of the dialog window:

Element	Type	Description
Summary	textarea	A brief description of the changes makes it easier to understand the changes in the version history.
This is a minor edit	checkbox	Spelling corrections or formatting changes are usually marked as such. Under Recent Changes, such changes are marked with the letter m ("minor changes"). This makes it easy to differentiate in which article version major changes have been made. In addition minor changes can be excluded from the watchlist.
Watch this page	checkbox	A check mark in this box causes the page to be included in the personal Watchlist.
Accept this unreviewed page	checkbox	This box will only be displayed if the revision function is activated in a namespace. A user with the corresponding rights of release can release the page design directly here.
Copyright notice	text	The slightly longer text between the article field and the page-save functions is the copyright notice.
Save changes		Clicking on this button saves the article with all changes made. The edit view will be closed.
Resume editing		This button returns directly to the page without saving the article. Editing is simply continued.
Show preview		The page opens in a preview window and can be saved from this window.
Review your changes		Shows a comparison of the article before editing and at the time of the current processing status with marking of the differences. The changes can be saved directly from this page

Editing conflicts

If you try to save a page that someone else is currently also working on, the system will report an editing conflict. Each author can compare the current changes and merge them as needed.

Blocked pages

Some pages can be protected and edited only by administrators. Instead of the edit option, a link to "View source code" appears. The cause is often obvious from the version history of the page. In this case, you can contact an administrator who can unlock the page.

Related info

• VisualEditor
• Insert images
• Insert tables