Wiki

Most of the Centenary website is collaboratively edited using software called molawiki. Editing rights at Centenary are protected by a cascading permissions scheme.

Wiki is a class of server-based software that provides a relatively quick (wiki is the Hawaiian word for quick) way for users of various skill levels to create and edit pages on a website using only their web browser and a simple short-hand mark-up style.

Wiki Syntax

A key feature of all wiki software is a plain-text "mark-up" syntax through which it is

  • reasonably easy to do easy things and
  • reasonably possible to do complicated things.

This markup is essentially a short-hand for xHTML/CSS. The following documentation is available:

Basic Overview Documentation

Below, find 2 printable PDF documents which show examples of all of the basic conventions of wiki-syntax as it is used to make web pages. The first (for the casual user) links wiki syntax to approximate visual results. The second, for the "power" user, shows the actual HTML results that results from wiki syntax.

Specialized Documentation

Power users will benefit from learning more about:

The Thing to Remember about Wiki Syntax

Unlike the editing of print documents, the primary point of marking up text for use on a web page is not primarily to achieve certain typographic effects and layout.

Instead, when you're wiki-editing a page, the key goal is often to mark pieces of content as certain types of content. For instance, a section headline (2nd level headline, <h2>) is a section headline regardless of whether it is rendered at 16px black or 28px green. Likewise, an unordered list item is a still conceptually a list item no matter if its bullet looks like ⇒ or •

But Why Should I Keep the Typographic and Layout Stuff Separate?

Because websites often undergo site-wide design make-overs that can change the look of all elements dramatically, hand-tweaking too many appearance-related details directly into the content makes a website difficult to maintain. Typographic and layout effects are better achieved through something called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) — CSS can be applied to many pages of a site at once. Moreover CSS can be updated in centralized places and cast visual effects over large sections of a website without having to worry over individual pages. Since websites often contain many thousands of pages...well, I'm sure you get it.

That being said, if you need help achieving a certain layout or visual effects, just contact .