How to web log

Welcome!

If you have found this page a maxim you know is currently attempting to indoctrinate you into writing for this website.

The software that keeps the lights on around here (ikiwiki) may not seem terribly easy to use at first, but that's mostly because it isn't. However, this inaugural article should fix that by collecting all the information one may need to know to get started into one place.

Firstly though, a little rambling about why I have put this place together (non-trivially), why I think it's rad as hell, and why you should care can be found here.

In general, if you need any help, please contact the webmister (maxim) through any channels or mediums you already have access to him through/with.

Making a user account

A user account is needed to be able to edit pages, to prevent randoms and CP spammers!

Registering should be easy, just try to edit a page and attempt to sign in. You will need the user creation password to make an account, which maxim will provide upon request.

Please do not hand it out willy and/or nilly!

Making a new page

There are two ways to make a new page.

The first is to link to the new page's location while editing an existing page using the [[/blog/your_name/post name]] WikiLink syntax. This is also how you hard link to your articles if you would like to add them manually to new posts or your user page. Hitting preview afterwards should bring up a little question mark next to the link that should take you to the new page. Please don't save this hardlink afterwards and instead hit cancel on the edit page, as everything should be auto-indexing.

The second way (much easier) is just to use this link:

https://rampstr.at/ikiwiki.cgi?do=create&page=%2Fblog%2F[YOUR NAME]%2F[POST NAME]

Just remember to replace the square brackets as well, as well as use underscores instead of spaces if you would like the post name to have spaces.

Bear in mind that the post name will not necessarily be the name of the article, which is instead set by adding the following to the top of your page (setting the author is also required if you want it to show up in the lists correctly, which you do!). The line with the # is just a header, more info on that in the formatting section.

[[!meta  title="This is a page title"]]
[[!meta  author="Your name"]]
# This is a page title

Basically, just put the above at the top of all of your posts but with the info switched out.

You can also include tags using [[!tag tag1 tag2 tag3]], and use these to categorise your posts how you wish.

Formatting

Formatting help is always available from the FormattingHelp link at the bottom of the edit page window.

It's also available here.

Highlights include:

Making text bold by surrounding it 2 asterisks, or italicised with 1 asterisk (* <-- these things),
Lists (like this one) by starting lines with an asterisk
Splitting paragraphs with TWO newlines instead of one.

In general, if you see something you like on someone else's page, just edit it to see what they did.

Just don't delete anything like a pillock, apply common sense and whatnot.

User page

Everyone has a user page at https://rampstr.at/users/[YOUR NAME]

For example, mine is https://rampstr.at/users/maxim

This is a place for whatever you would like, but I would suggest a sort of hub page for the other stuff you have written or are interested in.

An organised list of things you've written? A collection of images, links, or words you particularly like? Nothing? (lame)

Anything you like! I'm not your Dad!

CSS (for those inclined)

You can mess around with the style of your specific pages by dropping a local.css file in your specific blog directory. By doing this, you can make all your posts look yours, isn't that neat!

You can also mess around with the global stylesheet locally and suggest changes if you would like to change the default look of the web site.

(as much as I dig the white and black 1970s IBM look, it'd be nice for it to be a little more personal eh?)