Family History and Genealogy Wiki/Getting Started
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[edit] Setting Your Preferences
A user may customize the way a wiki page appears, or in how the wiki processes certain actions. Click the "preference" tab to go to your personal preference page. (If you are using the default settings, the preference tab probably appears along the top margin of the page.) Here you can
- Change the appearance of the page (click the "skins" tab to make a choice)
- Change your password
- Give your email address if you want people to be able to email you
- Set time display settings
- Adjust settings for things like "search", "WatchList", etc.
[edit] Finding an Article of Interest
Probably the first thing you will want to do here is find an article about someone you are interested in, say your great great grandfather. There are two main ways to do this:
- Use the standard search function. Every page on this wiki includes a search box, either in the navigation pane or somewhere in the body of the page. Type in the name of the person you are looking for, and click the "search button" below the entry field. You'll get a list of articles that contain whatever you placed in the data entry box.
- Check the Category:Surnames page. That page includes a listing of every surname that has been "categorized" on this wiki. Find the surname you are intersted in, click the link, and you'll get a list of articles about people who have been categorized under that surname. There are a lot of surnames included on that list, which makes this approach a bit difficult to use. To make things easier an index to the names included on that list has been created by Robin Patterson. This index categorizes surnames in broad alphabetical groups (e.g, surnames beginging with "Al", "Gar" "Wal", etc. You can find this index at Surname Index.
- Surname Search Function at Find a Surname. Robin has also created a search function that will allow you to enter in the first few letters of a surname, and get back a list of surnames included in the list of articles that include that begin with that letter sequence.
[edit] Editing an Existing Article
[edit] Creating a New Article
A detailed article on creating articles is found at Help:Starting pages. In brief, there are three basic methods
- Create Link. You can create an article by creating a link to it from an existing page
- Pick a name for the article.
- Open and edit an existing page where its appropriate (your User page is a good place for this). (See Editing an Existing Article above).
- Place the name of the article you want to create within "double square brackets". It will look like this [[Name of Article]]
- Save the page.
- Click the link you've just created, and you'll be taken to a blank page with the name of the article.
- Type something into the article (don't just save the blank page, as it won't "take".)
- Save the page
- At that point you will have a new article
- Create a Page. Use the "Create a Page" link in the navigation pane. This will take you to a page explaining how to create articles, and will also give you a "fill in the blank" text box that can be used to create a page on the fly. This page provides several alternative formats for person articles. Choose the "blank" format if you want to go it alone. Choose one of the others if you want to have the Wiki create some of the format elements. (There are several text boxes for creating articles following different formats. Pick the one that best fits your needs, create a page with it, and then modify the format as you see fit.
[edit] Communicating with Others
[edit] User Page
When you register with this Wiki (See XXXX) you automatically get a "user's page". User's pages have a number of uses, the most common of which is to use the "Discussion subpage" to receive messages from other Wikians. You can set up your main User page anyway you like. Some people use it to tell something about themselves. Others use it as a place to test out ideas, or to keep track of articles that they have written. (After awhile, if you write enough articles, it gets to be something of a problem just remembering what you've written previously. Without some way of keeping track you may find yourself reinventing an article about your maternal ggggrandmother that you created six months ago.
With regard to the later point, some people just create a simple list of the articles they've created. You can also get such a list by going to "my contributions", but the list will be shown with the most recent articles first. If you keep track of it yourself, you can order them in anyway that makes sense to you. Another approach to a simple list is to create an HTML table that diagrams your family relationships. (see example Family Tree. This can be used very effectively, but it does require some knowledge of HTML programming. Not hard to pick up, but creating a tree this way may not be for the faint of heart.
