Template:BNEwiki:FAQ
From BNE
Hi there. Thanks for visiting. Hope you find lots of interesting new energy info on our BNEwiki website.
If you wish to add your ideas, info, images and designs to this BNEwiki please feel free to do so. All we ask is that you respect information already on this BNEwiki and abide with the BNE Mission Statement
Getting started putting your thoughts into BNEwiki new energy Infopedia
The follow text hopefully will quickly, clearly and succinctly show you how to use this wiki forum.
It will help you understand the basic formatting structures and rules allowing you to add/edit/modify yours and others information pages.
Where did this amazing wiki software come from?
The free wiki software is from mediawiki.org. It is the software on which this BNEwiki website is based and is absolutely amazing.
Wiki philosophy
This wiki software site is part of a growing international wiki community and allows anybody in the world (you for example), over the internet to access knowledge, add knowledge and modify existing knowledge for all others to use across the globe.
The assumption here is that most people are intelligent and well meaning, so while there are what are called ‘vandals’ out there, most people (like your good yourself) will have a positive and supportive attitude toward the dissemination of knowledge and truth.
The beauty of this software is, that if a vandal comes along and deletes your’s or other people’s hard work and replaces the entire page with some antisocial or untrue or inaccurate comment, the software has the ability together with a person (like you) who notices the vandalism or untruth, to re-instate the original text at the touch of a button!
There are also various forums and levels of administration to resolve difference and potential conflicts!
What a wonderful social experiment we are taking part in!
It’s going to be fun to see how it works out!
What are the aims of this BNEwiki?
Here at BNE we’re focused to share and disseminate knowledge about understanding, designing, developing and building and distributing new clean renewable energy machines for the coming Golden Age.
We hope you’ve read and understand our BNE Mission Statement on our BNEwiki Main Page… if not, now is the time to read it.
How to I use and interact on BNEwiki?
Most words in blue, like BNE Mission Statement, are links to that information. Click on the word(s) and you will be taken to that page. You can always return to this page afterwards by pressing your brower ‘Back’ button
If the word(s) are in red it means there is a potential new page waiting for someone to write. You can click on the red text which takes you to the particular new blank page and if you wish, you can actually start writing it yourself! It’s that easy.
New page naming
There are various conventions (eg. try not to use words like ‘a’ or ‘the’ at the start of a page name unless you really feel it necessary). Make the name short and as close as possible to the subject of the page.
Pages generally form what are called ‘Articles’ which are generally arranged in Categories. An article can be in more than one category. Categories are used for indexing and searching (see below).
Generally pages are named by their content, eg.
Cosmix - a new age meditation
The way to create a new page is to type the name of the new page into the search box on the left of any page, and press Go.
If the page already exists it will be displayed.
If it doesn't yet exist, a message
No page with this exact title exists, trying full text search.
Will be displayed with a list of close matches.
If you want to start a new page with the name you originally typed into the search, click on ‘this exact title’ in the above message, and a new empty page is displayed with an appropriate message, and you just type in what you want to say, and save it. Simple as that!
We also encourage you to do a search for similar pages through the ‘Special pages’ menu on the lower left of most screens, just in case someone has already written about your subject.
What about formatting text on BNEwiki pages?
Now down to actual ‘nitty gritty’… putting in information you wish to appear in this BNEwiki…
How to Edit a page
If you look at the top of each page you will generally see a number of ‘tabs’, one of which is ‘Edit’.
Edit allows you to change the page you’re viewing… simple as that… you may just want to fix an existing ‘typo’ or improve on what is already there.
We encourage you to do so.
Once you’ve typed your text you can ‘Preview’ it, and when you’re happy with it ‘Save’ it together with a comment on what you ‘fixed’ and whether it is a minor fix.
Section headings
You can divide your page into sections which include automatic section headings (as you can see in this help file). If you have more than four sections, a table of contents is automatically generated (as above).
You can edit each section separately as you can see in this help file.
To start a new section just type the following at the start of a line
==This is a section heading==
produces:
This is a section heading
and then type your section straight after it on the next line. The section heading and associated text will automatically appear as in this help file.
You can have different 'levels' of section headings. Just use different numbers of =='s, three or four as the case may be to form sub-sections. eg.
===This is a subsection heading===
produces:
This is a subsection heading
and
====This is a sub-subsection heading====
produces:
This is a sub-subsection heading
Have a look at the table of contents (automatically generated) right at the top of this page, to see what these section and sub-section headings produce there.
Lists
To make a list, just start a line with an *, like this:
*this is the first in a list
*this is the second in a list
which will display as:
- this is the first in a list
- this is the second in a list
Neat hey?
Templates
Sometimes you have text (and anything else) that you want to use over and over again in different places. For example a list of things. And you only want to enter the information once and then use it in different places.
You do this by writing a 'Template'. A template is built just the same as any other page, except it's name starts with 'Template:'. So your template page name may be 'Template:My list of great inventions'
Store this page as you would any other page, and where you want to use it put in the following on it's own line {{My list of great inventions}} and your list will magically appear in your page.
How to form or join a Discussion about a page
There’s also a tab for ‘Discussion’ so you and others can share a conversation about the content of this page.
There are seemingly endless editing facilities in BNEwiki (check out the wikipedia.org website help files to read all about it), however you only need very few to get going on BNEwiki
Here are some tips..
To italicise words enclose them in double single quotes thus ''this is italicised'' which will result in this is italicised.
To bold words enclose them in triple single quotes thus '''this is italicised''' which will result in this is bold.
To bold and italicise enclose the words in five single quotes thus '''''this is bold italics''''' which will result in this is bold and italicised.
Categories
You see all those 'Categories' at the start of our BNEwiki Main Page? Well, you can choose a category (or many categories) in which you wish your page or article to appear.
To place this article or page in a category, at the begining of a new line, type the following:
[[Category:your category]]
where ‘your category’ is the description of the category you wish your article to be indexed in. It all happens automatically! You can have your article indexed under more than one category if you so wish just put another line in your text like so..
[[Category:Another category]]
You can place these statements anywhere in your article, preferably at the top.
They won’t display, but will link your page to that Category.
How to (up)Load Images
Do you see the 'Upload file' link on the left of the screen? Well, you must be logged in to the BNEwiki to upload images. Just follow the prompts.
- PLEASE BE CAREFUL TO LIMIT THE SIZE OF YOUR UPLOADED IMAGES
It's better to upload an image size that you can use 'as is', ie. without sizing it for display.
The bigger the image you upload, the slower your page will load with that image in it.
Our computer might 'hiccup' if you give it too much to digest at once!
How to use Images you have (up)Loaded
There is a command [[Image:Your_uploaded_image_filename]] that you can place in your text, and your image will display.
You can add attributes to this command such as:
[[Image:Your_uploaded_image_filename|100px|left|My Photo description]]
- The 100px will make the width 100 pixels. If you leave this out, your picture will display as it's real size as you (up)loaded it.
- The 'left' will force the picture to the left side of your article. You can also use 'right' and 'center'.
- 'My Photo description' will appear in a text box when you 'hover' over the picture
For the moment, if you need more info on how to use images please go to [1]] and search around in their help file. You see we are using the same sofware as Wikipedia here at BNEwiki.
Playing and storing Multimedia on BNE
The preferred formats for multimedia files on BNEwiki (audio and video files) are OGG. These are open system codecs that your current media player on your computer most probably can play (Your media player may have to download an appropriate codec to do so. Generally, this occurs automatically).
OGG as the audio and video format of choice for BNEwiki since it is a high quality, non-commercial and free technology, that will soon become very widespread.
However, BNEwiki also supports the following (currently more common) multi-media formats:
Valid media types on BNEwiki
Images
- png
- gif
- jpg
- jpeg
Sound
- wav
- wma
- ogg
Multimedia (video)
- mpg
- rm
- avi
- ogg
Playing audio and video Multi-media files
Strangely enough, you use the same general 'Image' format to 'play' audio and video files.
Ie, embed the following command in your page or article:
[[Image:audio or video file name|text to appear on page]]
All about OGG (if you're interested)
If you want to know more, have a look here...
If you want to store video or audio on BNEwiki in OGG format, you will need to first convert your video or audio files to OGG codecs. Click on this linkto find out how.
Convert your audio files to OGG for upload to BNE
Here is a great multi-platform program, Audacity, to convert your audio files to OGG format. You can then upload the OGG format sound files to BBA. Audacity is also a great audio editor in its own right.
Convert your video files to OGG for upload to BNE
Here is another great multi-platform program, ffmpeg2theora, which will convert your video files to OGG format, for upload to BNE.
Play your OGG files on Windows Media Player
If you want to play OGG on Direct Show or Windows Media Player, download the codecs from here.
Further BNEwiki Markup format examples
Further BNEwiki Markup examples can be found here...
More Help
This software is the same as the software used for the largest on-line encyclopedia in the world, namely Wikipedia, and as our BNEwiki is still new and we are still busy 'filling in the blanks'... if you need more help pages, go to the (very extensive) help pages at Wikipedia...
Open Wikipedia in another window, so you're still on-line to BNEwiki.
Now, ya'll come back now ya'hear...