Help:Getting Started Guide

This page provides a step-by-step guide for getting yourself up and running as a CAZypedia Responsible Curator or Author. If you have already established yourself on CAZypedia and are looking for specific help on editing/authoring pages see Help:Contents instead.

Obtain a user account

You must have a user account to contribute to CAZypedia. For security, direct creation of user accounts on CAZypedia has been disabled.

You are mostly likely reading this page becuase an account has already been set-up for you. Otherwise, if you would like to become a CAZypedia Author or Responsible Curator, please contact the Primary Curator, Harry Brumer, by email at brumer[@]msl.ubc.ca. Please make sure you are familiar with CAZypedia's mission and editorial policies.

Getting ready

• We generally prefer to use the Mozilla FireFox browser, which works consistently well with MediaWiki, the software that runs CAZypedia.
  • Note: Javascript should be enabled to ensure that CAZypedia's advanced editor, wikEd, functions properly.
  • You may be able to use other modern browsers, e.g. Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, etc.
    • Microsoft Internet Explorer (now retired) will work for basic editing, but will not run CAZypedia's advanced editor, wikEd, resulting in a poor experience.

• In FireFox, right-click on this link and select "Open Link in New Tab": Special:Userlogin
  • Opening pages on multiple tabs allows you to quickly jump back-and-forth to read these instructions while you do other stuff.

Set your account preferences

• If you are not logged in, click the "Log in" link at the top right of the page and do so.
• Click on "My preferences" at the top right of the page.
• Check that your "Real Name" and "E-mail Address" are correct (under the "User profile" tab).
• Check all of the boxes in the "E-mail" options box.
• Click "Save".
• Also: If you received a randomly generated password from CAZypedia by e-mail, you may change it to something that suits you better on your preferences page. However, please make sure to choose a strong password.

Make a biography for yourself on your userpage

• Take a moment to read this page on how to use the editor: Help:Editing (right click and "Open Link in New Tab").
• See biographies from other contributors for examples (right click and "Open Link in New Tab"). Gerlind Sulzenbacher's biography is particularly exemplary; we would like all contributors to have biographical pages with a similar amount of information as hers.
• If you are not logged in, click the "Log in" link at the top right of the page and do so.
• Click on your username at the top of the page (NOTE: Do not click on "my talk" - this is a different page, used as a discussion forum). A box will open for you start editing the page.
• When you've got some text in place, click the "Save Page" button at the bottom. It's OK to start with a few words (like your name) just to test it out.
• Not happy? Just click the "Edit" tab at the top of the page and change it - you can repeat this process again and again and again... It is understood that CAZypedia is a "work in progress," so don't worry about getting it perfect or complete on the first edit.
• Important: Your userpage page is the place where the Board of Curators would like you to demonstrate that you are credible expert in the field. Please make sure that your bio page is professional; it will be linked from whichever pages you are associated with, and all your edits in CAZypedia will be automatically logged in the history with links to your userpage.
• It is also requested that you enrich your userpage with a photo, as well as links to your academic homepage and the userpages of other CAZypedians with whom you may have worked. You can even include a short publication list. See Masafumi Hidaka's userpage for a great example of these.
• A handy tip: You can have more than one browser window/tab open at a time to look at examples in CAZypedia while you edit your page. You can also open the other page for editing (or "view source"), so you can copy & paste wiki-text from that example page to yours. This is a great way to get going quickly and make nice-looking CAZypedia pages.

Start contributing to your page!

• Have a look at some other Curator Approved pages by following this link (yes...right click, open in new tab...): Category:Curator approved
• Make sure to read Help:Editing, Help:References, and Help:Images carefully for information on how to make pages, and insert literature references and figures. These links are always one click away through the For contributors section in the left menu. Help:Editing is always available at the bottom of the editing window when it's open.
• You can navigate to your page either directly using the search in the top right corner of the page, or via the links in the Content section in the left menu.
• Click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the page and get to work!

A handy tip (redux)

You can always have more than one browser window/tab open at a time to look at examples in CAZypedia while you edit a page. You can even open the example page for editing (or "view source") at the same time, so you can copy & paste wiki-text from one to the other. This is a great way to create page content quickly, borrowing from already established CAZypedia pages.