QESTonline:Guidelines

General

1. After creating/editing a page, proof-read and spellcheck the page. This is not optional.
2. If the page is for external viewing, it is advisable to have another Spectra QEST employee give the page a thorough review.
3. If the page is for external viewing (especially any work to the user guide), please remember that most customers are not computer proficient. Pictures are highly encouraged; missing instructions (no matter how obvious the instruction appears to you) is not.

Page Header and Footer

Where the page is a part of a guide, or a set of pages, "Navigation" links should be provided at the top and bottom of the page. These should be labelled "Prev" and "Next". There should also be a link back to the main page that it is accessed from (usually the user guide main page - add an anchor where possible using a #). These links should be separated by a pair of pipes '||'

[[QestOnline:Guidelines Prev|Prev]] || 
[[QestOnline:Guidelines Next|Next]] || 
[[Main Page#Editing|Main Page]]
----

In the footer, you should also specify the categories that the page is in, using the following syntax.

----
[[QestOnline:Guidelines Prev|Prev]] || 
[[QestOnline:Guidelines Next|Next]] || 
[[Main Page#Editing|Main Page]]

[[Category:Help|{{PAGENAME}}]]

If a printable version of the page is to be created, use the format described below ([[QESTonline:Guidelines#<noinclude> </noinclude>]])

Tables

Tables should be of the spectratable class. The class can be specified at the top of the table

{| class="spectratable" |
! Header Row, Column 1
! Header Row, Column 2
|-
| Content Row 1, Column 1
| Content Row 1, Column 2
|-
| Content Row 2, Column 1
| Content Row 2, Column 2
|}

More information on the syntax for tables (in case you want to merge cells or do something else a little bit fancy) can be found at [1] (Wikipedia).

Naming Conventions

• Pages should generally be named using Sentence case.
• The guidelines laid out in Naming conventions (Wikipedia) are a good place to look if you are unsure.

Examples of names:

Users
Adding users
Removing users
Adding and removing users
Editing users

When adding a page, avoid replication. If you later find that there are two pages that are about the same thing, see if it makes sense to turn one of them into a redirect page. Syntax for a redirect page is:

#redirect [[Redirect Target]]

You don't need any extra information on the redirect page. You can also use the What links here tool to find which pages link to the redirect page, and change them to link to the correct page instead.

It can be useful to add redirect pages for singular/plural variations of the same thing. e.g. it could be useful to redirect User to Users (or vice-versa).

Tags

Use bold and italics to highlight important words, however, use them sparingly. They tend to make the text harder to read if used excessively.

'''bold'''
''italics''

Images

Images should use the frame option. Smaller images can be placed to the side of text, however, large images should have the center tag to prevent text being placed in a very small column to the side of the image.

Image Names should be prefixed by the page on which the image appears.

[[Image:Guidelines Example.png|frame|center]]
[[Image:Guidelines Example.png|frame]]

Namespaces

• Appear in the article title before the colon e.g., the page QESTLab:User_Guide is in the QESTlab namespace.
• Are invisible to the user (except for in the title)
• ALL articles appear in ONE namespace.
• Used to provide access control to articles (Main, QESTLab, QESTMix, Boral RnD, QESTAnalysis and Support are the only namespaces available to external users).
• Must see me if you need a new namespace to be created. Simply inventing a new one will not create a new namespace. The article will appear in the main namespace e.g., creating an article 'Crows:Are_Stupid' will create an article in the main namespace.
• The namespaces are:
  • (Main)
  • Administration
  • Boral RnD
  • Development
  • Implementation
  • Implementation Internal
  • QESTAnalysis
  • QESTDesign
  • QESTLab
  • QESTLab Internal
  • QESTMix
  • QESTMix Internal
  • Sales And Marketing
  • Support
  • Support Internal
  • Systems Admin

Each namespace also has its own Talk namespace, but these are not used.

Categories

• Used to separate articles into logical groups.
• Are visible to the user - click on the categories link in the navigation box to be taken to a list of categories.
• An article may appear none, one or many categories(It should appear in at least one)
• Add an article to a category by adding [[Category:Category_name]] to the end of the article e.g., [[Category:QESTLab]] will add the article to the QESTLab category.
• Categories can have sub-categories.
• A new category can be created by using the [[Category:Category_name]] tag. Please check that a suitable category does not already exist before creating a new category.

Please note: When a new category is created, a new link will appear allowing users to browse that category. This page will not contain any information and so will open in 'edit' mode when the link is clicked. External users do not have edit rights and will therefore not be allowed to view this page. To avoid this, when creating a new category: Go to the category page and save the page with some text (saving an unchanged page will not work) Edit the page again but remove the newly added text. Save the page. Check that the category page now opens in 'article' mode i.e., not edit mode.

Importing Pages

The tags [[Link title]] are used to link to pages within the wiki. Alternatively, users may use the syntax {{Link title}} to import pages onto the document. An example of this tags use is the printable user guides - these pages simply import information from other pages.

The following line imports the page 'QESTLab:Aggregate/soil & asphalt testing - finding samples' and sets it at a heading of 4 (see below for information on using the tier variable).

{{QESTLab:Aggregate/soil & asphalt testing - finding samples|tier===}}

In order to make the resulting importee page legible, users must make use of the following wiki tags.

<noinclude> </noinclude>

Text between the <noinclude> </noinclude> tags will be shown only when a page is not imported. This tag should be used around the page header and footer for pages in the user guide. Failure to include these tags will mean that the footer information is printed when the page is imported.

<noinclude> 
[[QestOnline:Guidelines Prev|Prev]] || 
[[QestOnline:Guidelines Next|Next]] || 
[[Main Page#Editing|Main Page]]
----

<noinclude> 
----
[[QestOnline:Guidelines Prev|Prev]] || 
[[QestOnline:Guidelines Next|Next]] || 
[[Main Page#Editing|Main Page]]
</noinclude> 
[[Category:Help|{{PAGENAME}}]]

<includeonly> </includeonly>

Text between the <includeonly> </includeonly> tags will be shown only when a page is imported. The following example sets the heading level on the imported page to tier + 1 on the imported page.

<includeonly>{{{tier}}}</includeonly><noinclude>=</noinclude>=Registering a sample=<noinclude>=</noinclude><includeonly>{{{tier}}}</includeonly>

Other stuff

• When referring to a specific object, add a link. e.g. system administrator - even if that page just has a couple of lines, and directs the user to a different page in the wiki.
• Avoid repeating information - it becomes impossible to maintain the wiki when information is spread across multiple pages. Use a link to the article or import it into the page.
• Include the name of the website in brackets after external links.
  E.g. See the help page (WikiMedia) for editing information.