From LINC

Welcome to the site

This site is based on the MediaWiki engine, which is the same engine that runs WikiPedia. Most of the things you can do on WikiPedia (formatting text, uploading files, using templates, typing math TeX inline these pages, etc) can be done here!

Establishing yourself

In order to fit your userspace into the rest of the page, you will need to complete the following steps:

1. Create your user page
2. Customize the user page
3. Redirect your User:loginname page
4. Add yourself to the members page
5. Upload your publications and presentations

In this process, you will learn how to perform the following tasks:

• Create a page on the site
• Include a template
• Create a redirect
• Edit other pages
• Upload files

Building your user page

Your personal page is located at Your Name, where Your Name is your full name as you would like it to be listed in bibliographies and in lists on this website. This page will contain information about you, links to publications, links to presentations, and more.

• Create your userpage. In the search box on the left side of the page, type your full name and hit "Go". When you get to the page, you will see a message that the page does not have any text or does not exist. Click Edit in the "View" box on the left side of the page. This is how you will edit a page.

• Include the base user template. A template is a page that has predefined content. Many of the pages on this site will use templates to keep content consistent. For your user page, we are going to substitute the template into your page. Usually, you would simply include the template, so that if the template changes then your page would reflect that change. However, you will want to fine-tune the page, so we are just using the template to create the skeleton.

So, in the edit box, type the following, substituting your login name (not your full name unless they're the same) for myusernamehere: {{subst:Userpage skeleton|myusernamehere}}

• Type "creation" in the Summary box. All edits made to a page are remembered and can be reviewed and compared. The "summary" is a brief description about the edit to differentiate it in the edit list. (If you want to see this list for a page, click History in the "Views" box.)

• Preview the page. Click the "Show preview" button to see what your edit is going to look like once you have saved it. The page will refresh and you can see what the code the template is inserting into your page looks like.

• Save the page. Click "Save page" to commit the page to the system.

You basic userpage is now on our website. The next step is to customize the page

Customize your user page

• Open the edit page. While viewing your user page, click Edit in the "Views" list on the left. This will open the edit box for your user page.
• Edit the "Userbox". Template:Userbox is a template that creates the gray sidebox for your user page. So that you dont have to worry about all the formatting, the box is saved in a template. You must simply pass the right parameters to populate the box. Fill in the information, using "Preview page" to see how it looks.
• Edit the "About Me" section. You can describe yourself in this section. Notice that the section uses the Template:UT and Template:WNCG templates as shortcuts to link directly to those external webpages. Other tricks like this can be found in the article Help:Abbreviation templates.
• Delete sections you don't need. If you have no publications or presentations, you can remove these sections from your page.
• Add your research areas. Typing {{area|Name of Area}} will add you to that area. You will automatically be listed in that page's member list. The Name of Area should be the same as the title of the page that represents that area. To see the areas, click "Research Areas" in the navigation bar on the left side of the page. (If you want to add a Research Area later, refer to Template:Research area skeleton for instructions. You may want to do this later though, and get your user page created first. :) )
• Save the page.
• Upload a photo for yourself. While viewing the page (not editing), notice the red-link in the userbox on the right. If you click that redlink, it will take you to a page to help you upload that image. For more instructions on how to upload a page, see Help:How to upload a file.

Create redirections to your user page

We need to make sure that any link to your username or your user picture will redirect to your actual user page. To do this, we are going to make those pages redirect to your actual user page.

So, to create this "redirect", do the following:

• Open your User:Loginname page. In the left-hand "Personal tools" box, you should see your user name at the top of the list.
  • Create the redirect. Copy the following text into the edit box, changing the appropriate info:

    #REDIRECT [[Full Name]]

  • Save the page.
• Open your Image:Loginname.jpg page. On your user page, click the image of yourself and then click "Edit" to edit the page.
  • Create the redirect. Copy the following text into the edit box, changing the appropriate info:

    #REDIRECT [[Full Name]]

  • Save the page.

Add yourself to the members page

You will now add yourself to the members list of the Members page.

• Open the Members page.
• Add your name to the appropiate list. Simply copy a line representing another member and edit the information so it is your own. Try to keep the list in alphabetic order according to last name. The new line in the list should look like:

  | username | Full Name | a couple of lines to describe yourself

  Note that the line starts with a "|" character and does not end with one. There should be exactly 3 "|" characters per line. Include links to your research areas too!

• Preview the page and make sure you have added the line right.
• Save it!

Upload your publications and presentations

To upload a publication or presentation, you will upload a file and then create a page about that publication. For more information, see the following templates for instructions:

• Template:Conference paper
• Template:Presentation
• Template:Group presentation
• Template:Paper for repository

Getting to know the site

Finally, here are a few tips about getting around this site:

• Articles that start with "LINC:" or "Repository:" are viewable only when you are logged in.
  • "LINC:" articles are pages that deal with our group that should be private.
  • "Repository:" articles are pages about papers by other authors that we want to index, keep track of, and discuss.
• Research Areas are the research interests of our group. They are broad categories and should generally interest more than one group member. As Sriram mentioned, these are focus areas for our group. If there needs to be another one on this site, add a new research area!
• Category:Conferences lists conferences that we are interested in submitting papers to and attending. If you know of a conference not on our site, add a new conference!
• And, you can type formulas in TeX here on this site. Wikipedia:WP:MATHis a great tutorial on the markup.

  Example:

  Source: <math>x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}</math>