Information for Help Editors
We need more help page editors. If you know KGS well, and know how to write HTML, then we want you! Please email admin@gokgs.com to request editing access: add both your KGS username and the language you want to work in. Note that only people who are able to write correctly in English will be accepted as editors for the English pages.
After you sign up, please join the wiki room and keep an eye on it. The wiki room is under "social."
Unlike most wikis, the KGS help pages use raw XHTML to edit. So if you are used to the [i]...[/i], etc., tags of other wikis, this will be a bit different. If you have edited HTML or XHTML in the past, it will be easy!
If you have only used HTML, then you will notice some changes. KGS uses XHTML, which is an extension of HTML.
In addition, KGS uses XHTML/strict. This means that many attributes that affect the "look" of the text aren't available. CSS styles need to be used instead. A CSS tutorial can be found here. HTML and CSS cheat sheets can be found here.
When you edit, you don't have to type the whole page. Everything up to and including the <body> tag is done for you, so you just need to type what goes between the two body tags.
When you visit any KGS help page, if you have editing control, there will be an "edit this page" link at the bottom. Just click it, and you can edit!
After you make your changes, press the "update help page" link at the bottom. If you made any XHTML mistakes, they will be listed. Note that some things aren't allowed; anything with a script, or that can be used to hide a script, is not allowed. This is to prevent editors from adding password-stealing scripts, etc., to the pages. Stay with just text and you'll be fine.
If there is something you would like to know about how things are usually done in the help pages, you can probably find it in the KGS Guidelines. However, there is no "usually" for most choices made by a help editor. Most edits are done in the way that makes the most sense to editor. Everything a help editor does is subject to change by future help page editors, anyway.
If you want to add a new page, just add a link to it from a current page. All links to other help pages must be in the format <a href="/help/newPage.html">. Don't forget the /help/! Once the link is made, just follow the link, and there will be your blank page, ready to edit.
To add things to the hot links box that appears to the side of the page you type, click the link to edit any page, then click the "List all Help Pages" link at the top. You'll see a page named "toc.html". This is the hot links page. Edit it like any page, but instead of typing XHTML to go inside a body tag, this text will go inside a div tag on every page. There is a shortcut to "toc.html" in the Resources For Help Editors page.
When you need to add an image, you can upload it to the server. Click on the "upload image" link at the top of the page you are editing. Directions are there. But remember: the KGS help images are named by the file name and the language, but not by the extension, so if you upload "screenShot.png" as an English picture, it will overwrite an English "screenShot.jpg"! But if there is a French image named "screenShot", that's OK, that will not be overwritten.
The usual way of adding images to the help pages is broken. However, we are still able to upload images. To upload an image go to here and upload the desired image. Once the image has been uploaded copy the code from HTML image. For example: (a href="http://imgur.com/hIbYx3U")(img src="http://i.imgur.com/hIbYx3U.png" alt="" title="Hosted by imgur.com" /)(/a). Paste the code into the help page in the section you want. Shorten the code. For example (img src="http://i.imgur.com/hIbYx3U.png" alt="meijin")(/img) and preview edits. Check for any errors. From here your image should be good to go.
Right now the system has no "collision detection." That is, if two people edit the same page and the same time, whoever updates first will have all their changes replaced by the person who updates second. If this happens, you can see your old changes by clicking on an older version of the page on the editing system; please try to merge your changes in. In a future release I'll add code to detect when this is happening and warn you before you start editing. wms.
Right now (Febuary 2010) collisions between different help editors are extremely rare for two reasons.
- the lack of help page editors
- edits in different languages don't collide
There are many reasons, other than collisions between two help page editors, that help page edits are lost. dj
More KGS windows need Help buttons. For example, it would be nice to have a Help button on the File Menu. The descriptive text in the Main KGS Window help page for the File Menu could be moved to the help page that supports the File Menu Help button. This applies to the User Menu and to the other drop-down window on the Main Window menu bar that need Help buttons. See the Help Button Ideas in the Future Editing Plans for more details. dj.
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