Edit page History How do I edit this website?

Editing the Wiki

This page explains how to write and edit wiki pages. The simplest way to create or modify a page is using GitHub’s online file editor. Each page has an “Edit page” link at the top right with a direct link to this interface.

Advanced users can make edits via a local clone of the site repository; see the advanced editing guide for setup instructions.

Creating a new page

Let’s dive in to how to create a new page on the site. If you are looking to edit an existing page, skip to adding and editing page content below.

  1. Navigate to the pages section of the repository. Click then from the drop-down:

    help/create-page-etw

  2. Add a name for your file. Note: this is not the page title; the page title will be applied in the next section, front matter. File names should be all lower case, use the file extension .md, avoid symbols and spaces, and separate words using dashes (-):

    help/name-your-file

Front matter

Every page begins with a block of front matter: a sequence of parameters that configure your page. Without the front matter, your page will not render correctly. The following table lists front matter fields you can use:

Field Purpose
title The title of your page. This is the only required field.
description A short description of your page. Also used for the site’s search engine. When omitted, the first sentence of the page content is used.
section Main menu section that should be open when this page first loads, if any. Nested sections to expand should be separated by colons (:). For example, this page’s section is Help:Editing the Wiki.

Below is a minimal example front matter block. You can copy and paste this code into the editor of a new page (see above). Replace My Awesome Page with the title for the new page.

---
title: My Awesome Page
---

Adding and editing page content

This section covers how to populate the content of your page.

Markdown

Markdown is plain-text syntax formatting, allowing you to easily and cleanly modify text with italics, bold, ordered or bulleted lists, etc. This wiki uses GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM); a basic GFM guide can be found here.

Here are some common kinds of text formatting:

Formatting Markup
italic text *italic text*
bold text **bold text**
bold and italic text ***bold and italic text***
fixed width text/code `fixed width text/code`
struck-out text ~~struck-out text~~
Hyperlink [Hyperlink](https://example.com/)
red text <span style="color: red">red text</span>

Note that the last example, colored text, is not really Markdown, but rather plain HTML. However, Markdown does not have a syntax for changing text color, and it supports mixing in HTML, so you can use the technique above if you need text in different colors.

Certain kinds of content have dedicated pages of this guide:

Liquid

On top of Markdown, the site uses a templating language called Liquid to make page editing more convenient than with Markdown alone. Liquid tags look like {% ... %} or {{ ... }}. Many pages on this site use Liquid to invoke functions called includes, which enable insertion of images, figures, notices, and more. (Think of this as: “I would like to include an image”.) Here are some examples:

Markup Result
{% include yes %}
{% include person id="rasband" %} rasband
{% include icon name="imagej" %} imagej

Available includes

The following tables list all of this site’s general-purpose includes:

Citations and footnotes

Include Purpose
citation Insert a citation
cite Insert a citation
publication (TODO) Insert a citation by name
testimonial (TODO) Insert a personal quote

Linking

Include Purpose
link-banner (TODO) Insert a large, obvious link
github Link to a resource on GitHub
javadoc Link to a javadoc resource
matlab (TODO) Link to MATLAB documentation
maven Link to Maven artifacts
scholar (TODO) Link to an article on Google Scholar
wikipedia Link to a Wikipedia page

Symbols

Include Purpose
bc Insert a menu breadcrumb
button Insert a button
key Insert a keyboard shortcut
icon Insert icons
yes (TODO) Insert a checkmark icon
no (TODO) Insert an X icon

Media

Include Purpose
img Insert an image
gallery Insert an image gallery
video Embed a video

Notices

Include Purpose
notice Insert an informational notice banner
aside (TODO) Float a right sidebar with commentary

Source code

Include Purpose
github-embed (TODO) Embed a code snippet from GitHub
code-example (TODO) Side-by-side code + result

Miscellaneous

Include Purpose
quiz (TODO) Insert a Q&A with hidden answer
timeline (TODO) Insert a horizontal timeline
tooltip (TODO) Add a tooltip appearing on mouseover
echo (TODO) For debugging

TO CHANGE

Include What needs to happen
thumbnail (TODO) Merge with img include
thumbnail-link (TODO) Merge with img include
info-box Delete after migrating to statbox
clear (TODO) Delete after purging all floats
project (TODO) Delete after improving statbox
person Person pages not yet formalized
person-list Person pages not yet formalized