Create articles

An important aspect of a knowledge base is that content can be created, edited and shared quickly with others. Changes to an article can be tracked and reversed at any time through the revision history of the page.

3.1 Creating an article

You can create a new article directly in the knowledge base or from the Easy software.

To create an article:

1. Click the +- button on any page.
2. Enter the name for the new page. If the page does not exist yet, you will see a red link.
   File:Manual:Create page dialog.png

   Create a new page
3. Click done.
4. Choose Blank Page or a page template. The page now opens in edit mode. Make at least one edit to activate the Save-button.
5. Save the article. It now exists in the main namespace.

3.2 Changing an article name

If you want to change the article name later (e.g., to store it in another namespace), you can move the article.

3.3 Naming conventions

• Title choice: In a wiki, titles are very important. In wikis with many entries, it happens that authors "on the off chance" set links to pages that they consider important in the context of their entry. It should therefore be ensured that the title describes as briefly and precisely as possible what the page is about. Single words work well, but short phrases like "why wikis work" can also be useful names. In addition, meaningful page titles also make it easier for readers to find their way around and to search for an article using the title search.

• Namespaces: To create a article in another namespace, the respective article name must be preceded by the namespace prefix, i.e. namespace:articlename. An article name can exist multiple times in the wiki as long as it is in different namespaces.
• Special characters: The following characters not can be used in titles: { } & ? < > \ and , . You can find more about this at Mediawiki.
• Spelling: When linking to an already existing page via the source text mode, you should pay attention to the exact spelling. For example, if you enter [[Hello world]] instead of [[Hello World]], a new page is created again because the links were written differently. You should therefore also take into account upper and lower case letters and spaces. Only with the first letter does it make no difference whether you write it in upper or lower case.

3.4 Alternative options

There are additional ways to create an article:

• Search: Maybe a page on your topic already exists. Before you create a new page, you can use the search function to enter terms related to your topic and check existing pages. If there is no suitable page yet, click on the red link Create page in the search results of the quick menu. There is also a + button for creating a new page in the Search Center.
• Redlink: When you write an article, you can select any text and set a link to a non-existing page. This creates a redlink that allows anyone to create the wanted page.
• Browser address bar: You can also create a page directly from the address bar of your web browser. To do this, simply replace the title of the current page with a new page name and press the Enter key.

Related info

• Rename and move pages
• Redirects