Contents

• What is a Wiki?
• Can I Edit Our Wiki?
• Find your Wiki
• Navigate Using the Table of Contents
• Search Wiki Folders
• Create or Edit a Wiki Page
• Syntax References
• Manage a Wiki Page
• Add Images
• Add Live Content by Embedding Web Parts
• View History
• Copy Pages
• Print All
• Discuss This
• Check for Broken Links
• Add a Link to the Source of a Wiki Page

• Add Screenshots to a Wiki

What is a Wiki?

Can I Edit Our Wiki?

If you are an Author, you may have insufficient permissions to use many wiki editing features. Authors can only create new wiki pages and edit those they have created, and may not edit or manage pages created by others. Please see your Admin if you believe you need a higher level of permissions to work with your wiki. You'll know you don't have sufficient permissions when you fail to see the editing links at the top of wiki pages. Just make sure you're logged in first.

Find Your Wiki

When you have located a wiki section or page, you will see wiki links for "Edit," "Manage," "History" and "Print." These are shown in the picture below.

Wiki Appears As A Section On A Portal Page. Some wikis can be accessed through a wiki section on your folder's portal page. if present, this section was created and named by your Admin. To access the wiki, click on the section's Maximize button (the square icon on the right side of the title bar for the section).

Wiki IS The Folder Portal Page Itself. Your wiki might actually be the portal page of a Folder itself. If this is the case, you can click on the name of this folder in the left-hand navigation "Project Folders" menu to access its wiki. For example, the home page of the "Documentation" folder within the LabKey.org Home Project is a wiki itself, so you access it by clicking on "Documentation" in the "Project Folder" list.

To read a page, click on its name in the "Pages" section in the right-hand column. This section provides a Table of Contents.

Wiki Is A Folder Tab. Sometimes a wiki is set up as a Tab, so you can click on the Tab to access the wiki. You can see a wiki tab in the picture above. In this case the Portal tab is set to display the contents of the Wiki tab, so both of these tabs display the same contents.

Navigate Using the Table of Contents

You can see pages that precede and follow the page you are viewing (in this screenshot, "Installs and Upgrades").

Expand/Collapse TOC Sections. To expand sections of the TOC, click on the "+" sign next to a page name. This will expand this section of the TOC and display daughter pages. To condense a section, click on the "-" sign next to it and the section will collapse. Shrinking sections helps to keep the end of the TOC in view for large wikis.

Expand/Collapse All. You can use the "Expand All" and "Collapse All" links at the end of a wiki table of contents to collapse or expand the entire table instead of just a section.

Search Wiki Folders

Please note that this search field only appears on the wiki's home page, not every wiki page. To reach it, you need to click on the name of the wiki folder in the lefthand navigation column. Alternatively, click on the name of your folder in the breadcrumb trail at the top of the page. This brings you to the home page for the folder, where the search bar lives.

Create or Edit a Wiki Page

This brings you to the Wiki Editor, whose features will be discussed in the following sections. The page you are currently reading looks as follows in the Editor:

Name. The page Name identifies it uniquely within the wiki. The URL address for a wiki page includes the page name. Although you can create page names with spaces, we recommend using short but descriptive page names with no spaces and no special characters.

The first page you see in a new wiki has the page name set to "default." This designates that page as the default page for the wiki. The default page is the page that appears by default in the wiki web part on the Portal page. Admins can change this page later on (see "Customizing the Wiki Web Part" in the Wiki Admin Guide).

Title. The page Title appears in the title bar above the wiki page.

Parent. The Parent page must be specified if your new page page should appear below another page in the table of contents. If you do not specify a parent, the page will appear at the top of your wiki's table of contents. N.B.: You cannot immediately specify the order in which a new page will appear among its siblings under its new parent. After you have saved your new page, you can adjust its order among its siblings using its "manage" link (see the "Manage a Wiki Page" section below for further details).

Body. You must include at lease one character of initial text in the Body section of your new page. The body section contains the main text of your new wiki page. For details on formatting and linking syntax, see

• Wiki Syntax Help
• Advanced Wiki Syntax
• Embed Live Content in Wikis

• Wiki page: The default rendering option. A page rendered as a wiki page will display special wiki markup syntax as formatted text. See Wiki Syntax Help for the wiki syntax reference.
• HTML: A wiki page rendered as HTML will display HTML markup as formatted text. Any legal HTML syntax is permitted in the page.
• Plain text, with links: A wiki page rendered as plain text will display text exactly as it was entered for the wiki body, with the exception of links. A recognizable link (that is, one that begins with http://, https://, ftp://, or mailto://) will be rendered as an active link.

Files (Attachments). You can also add and delete attachments from within the wiki editor.

Add Files. Within the wiki editor's "Files" section below the wiki "Body," click the "Browse" button to locate the file you wish to attach. Within the "File Upload" popup, select the file and click "Open." The file will be attached when you save the page.

Note that you cannot upload a file with the same name as an existing attachment. To replace an attachment, delete your old attachment before adding a new one of the same name.

Delete Files. Within the editor's "Files" section, click the "delete" link next to any file you have already attached in order to delete it from the page.

Display Files. Whenever you add attachments to a wiki page, the names of the files are rendered at the bottom of the displayed page. You must both attach an image and use the proper syntax to make the picture itself visible. Only then will the image itself (not just its file name) appear. To display (not just attach) images, see the "Add Images" section of this page.

Manage Display of the Attached File List. Please see Manage Wiki Attachment List.

Save & Close Button. Saves the current content of the page, closes the editor and renders the edited page. Keyboard shortcut: CTRL+Shift+S

Save Button. Saves the content of the editor, but does not close the editor. Keyboard shortcut: CTRL+S

Cancel Button. Cancels out of the editor and does not save changes. You return to the state of the page before you entered the editor.

Delete Page Button. Deleted the page you are editing. You must confirm the deletion in a pop-up window before it is finalized.

Show/Hide Page Tree Button. Located on the upper right of the editor, this button toggles the visibility of your wiki's table of contents (the page tree) within the editor. It does not affect the visibility of the table of contents outside of the editor. The Shown/Hidden status of the page tree is remembered between editing sessions. Hide the page tree to make the editor page render most quickly.

The "Name" of each page in the tree appears next to its "Title." This makes it easier for you to remember the "Name" of links when editing your wiki.

Click on the "+" sign next to any node in the tree to make the list of its child pages visible. Click the "-" next to any expanded node to collapse it.

Use the HTML Visual Editor and Use the HTML Source Editor Tabs. When you have selected "HTML" using the "Render As" drop-down menu, you have the option to use either the HTML Visual Editor or the HTML Source Editor. The Visual Editor provides a WYSIWYG editor while the Source Editor lets you edit HTML source directly.

Quirks of the HTML Visual Editor:

• To insert an image, you cannot use the Visual Editor. Use the Source Editor and syntax like the following: <img src="FILENAME.PNG"/>
• To view the editor full-screen, click the screen icon on the last row of the editor.

Syntax References

• Wiki-Language Syntax:
• Wiki Syntax Help
• Advanced Wiki Syntax
• Extended HTML Syntax for LabKey:
• Embed Live Content in Wikis

Manage a Wiki Page

You can also delete the wiki page from the Manage page. Note: When you click the Delete Page button, you are deleting the page that you are managing, not the page that's selected in the Sibling Order box. Make sure you double-check the name of the page that you're deleting on the delete confirmation page, so that you don't accidentally delete the wrong page.

Add Images

Wiki-Language. To add images to a wiki-language page, you must first add the image as an attachment, then refer to it in the body of the wiki page using wiki syntax such as the following: [FILENAME.PNG].

HTML. To insert an image on page rendered as HTML, you cannot use the HTML Visual Editor. After attaching your image, use the Source Editor and syntax such as the following: <img src="FILENAME.PNG"/>.

Add Live Content by Embedding Web Parts

View History

If you wish to make this older version of the page current, select the "Make Current" button at the bottom of the page. You can also access other numbered version of the page from the links at the bottom of any older version of the page.

Note that you will not have any way to edit a page while looking at its older version. You will need to return to the page by clicking on its name in the wiki TOC in order to edit it.

Copy Pages

You can copy all wiki pages within the current folder to a destination folder of your choice. Click the "Copy Pages" link under the "Pages" header above the Table of Contents. Then click on the appropriate destination folder. Please note that the source folder is initially highlighted, so you will need to click a new folder if you want to avoid creating duplicates of all pages in the source folder itself. When you have selected the appropriate destination folder, take a deep breath and select "Copy Pages."

Print All

Discuss This

Check for Broken Links

You can use ordinary link checking software on a LabKey Server wiki. For example, the free Xenu link checker works well.

Tips for efficiency in using this link checker:

• Set it to exclude URLs that represent the execution of common actions on wiki pages. For example, when checking LabKey.org's documentation (at https://www.labkey.org/wiki/home/Documentation/page.view?name=default), paste the following two URLs into the "Do not check any URLs beginning with this:" textbox:
• https://www.labkey.org/Project/home/Documentation/expandCollapse.view
• https://www.labkey.org/wiki/home/Documentation/printBranch.view
• Reduce the search depth using the "More Options" button on the page that lets you define the parameters of a search (reached via File -> ). LabKey.org's documentation tree is searched successfully at a "Maximum Level" of 40.
• Turn off prompts for login certifications when checking a wiki whose content is intended to be public. Using the "More Option" button described above and uncheck the box for "Ask for passwords and certificates as needed."
• Reduce the Parallel Threads to 10 (from the default 30). This will help reduce the number of false bad link reports due to timeouts.

Add a Link to the Source of a Wiki Page

It is useful to include a "view source" link on wiki pages used to demonstrate the use of LabKey APIs. For example, you will see a "view source" link in the upper right of this API tutorial page.

If you replace the "page" portion of the URL for a wiki page with "source", the URL will lead to the HTML source of the wiki page.

It may also be useful to open a separate page for viewing the source. In these examples, replace "default" with the appropriate page name:

• Open a LabKey-bordered copy of the source:

<div align="right">
[<a onClick="window.open('source.view?name=default')" href="#">view source<a>]
</div>

• Open a page that includes only the source, without a LabKey border:

<div align="right">
[<a onClick="window.open('source.view?name=default&_template=none')" href="#">view source<a>]
</div>

Related Topics

• File Management Tutorial, Step 4: Share the Data