Need Help with Wiki Pages?

There are Wiki pages associated with some of the CAT challenges and group reads. If you need help with updating a page, post here!

I'll try to answer whatever questions I can, but others are welcome to jump in with answers and suggestions too.

Some general advice:

Do not worry about making a mistake and messing up a page! It can always be corrected, and this can be done by any member, not just yourself. So if you delete something by accident or mangle the layout, don't panic! It can be easily fixed. Older versions of the pages are saved.

Each time you update a page, there is a "preview" button so you can check what you've added before submitting it, and a "cancel" button if you want to abandon your change.

How to add an entry to a CAT page:

As an example, look at the HistoryCAT page. Go to the August section, in the "Theme: Medicine & Disease" subsection. There is an "edit" button next to the subsection title. If you click on this (go ahead and try this; you won't break anything), a window will open up showing the source code. One of the entries I added looks like this:

* http://www.librarything.com/work/9989664 The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee - mathgirl40 - '''COMPLETED'''

The asterisk creates a new bullet point. The two items between the square brackets are the book's Web page address and the title and together, these create a link to the page. The rest of the line is whatever text you want to add. The triple-apostrophes around COMPLETED make this word show up in bold.

If you had clicked "edit" as suggested above and now want to quit without changing anything, scroll to the bottom of the window and click on "Cancel".

To add your own entry to any of the CAT pages, it's easiest to click on the "edit" button for the section you want to add to and then copy someone else's entry and insert in the right location. (Usually the lists are maintained in alphabetical order of title, but I don't think this is a strict rule.) Then change the link address, book title and username as required. Scroll to the bottom and click on "Show Preview". Keep making changes as needed, and then click on "Save" when you're done.

ETA: See >14 christina_reads: for a tip on how to quickly get the URL (Web page address) for your book.

So I can't use the bracketed touchstones in the wiki, right? Do I have to look up the http address for each book I want to enter? Is there an easy way to do this or do I have to look the work up on LT and then copy/paste the web address into the brackets and then type out the title?

(told you I was working from zero! Thanks so much for starting this thread!)

>3 mathgirl40: I have to admit to "fixing" ones I notice are not in alphabetical order! :-)

(That is, just copying/pasting until everything is in alphabetical order!)

>4 japaul22: You would find the book page here on LibraryThing and copy that URL and paste it after the open bracket, then type out the title before closing the brackets.

Does that make sense? (It sounds like you have it figure out correctly.)

>4 japaul22: Yes, as >6 LibraryCin: says, it sounds like you've already figured it out. :)

Don't be afraid to edit the wiki. It is really hard to break anything badly, and there are always those of us around who can fix something if it isn't right. Just holler about what you think is wrong and we'll look at it. No worries!

I know how to do the wiki pages, but find it very awkward and time consuming, so I usually don't bother. Having to cut and paste both the URL and the title is more trouble than I want to go to. I may enter one book for a month, but certainly not further books that would fit.

After a couple of years of not adding to the wiki, I felt quite guilty and this year did add - for awhile. But it is just one thing too much for me. First I add the book in my theme section, then add it again in my thread, so adding to the wiki just got to be too much.

Trying to keep the thread up to date, and read threads, and polish my collection so that everything is right takes up so much time my actual completed reading actually fell. I have to put reading first I think.

I appreciate that some members really use the wiki but I haven't, so that was the one step I dropped.

It's a shame that we can't use touchstones with the Wiki pages. That would make adding books easier. In any case, using the Wiki, like everything else, is entirely optional. It's nice for people to see a record of what was read for a CAT and it's also a convenient way to see a list of themed or recommended books, but it's certainly not a requirement.

This thread was not intended to suggest that people should use the Wiki. It's mainly for those who want to use the Wiki but are having difficulty doing so. :)

We've talked about how to add books to existing Wiki pages, but feel free to ask questions about how to set up your own Wiki pages, or to get volunteers to help do so. In the coming months, we'll all be getting set up for next year's challenges and group reads.

I'll admit I was also hoping that there weren't so many steps to adding a book to the wiki, but I'm very grateful that this thread was set up. Even though the wiki is an added step, I see a lot of benefits to it over just having the discussion threads. It is really nice that everyone can edit it on their own and I think it's a good place to centralize our list of books read and recommendations. Obviously, it will always be an optional step but it's good to have an easily found explanation of how to update it for those who want to.

So, thanks mathgirl40 for getting this going. I will probably be back with more questions when I actually need to update a wiki!

Thanks for starting this thread. Hopefully it will encourage anyone who may have been hesitant about using the Wikis.

I just wanted to add that you don't actually have to visit a book's LT page in order to get the URL for the wiki. Maybe you're writing a review of Jane Austen's Emma on your thread, and you use the touchstone. Then you want to add the book to a wiki. Instead of clicking on the touchstone, which will take you to the book's LT page, you can right-click on the touchstone and select "Copy Link." This should copy the URL so that you can paste it directly into the wiki. So, in this example, here's the book's URL, which I was able to copy without ever leaving this page: http://www.librarything.com/work/364. Then I would just paste that into the wiki code as described at >3 mathgirl40: above.

Does that make sense? For me, this is quicker than going to a book's LT page, so I just thought I'd share.

>14 christina_reads: thanks, that's a great tip!

>14 christina_reads: Thanks for the tip! I've added a pointer to your message at the end of my original post.

>14 christina_reads: Huh! I didn't know that! Thanks for the tip! (Although I'm generally already on the book's page, as I'm adding my review, etc, but that's still good to know!)

>14 christina_reads: - that would make it a little faster. Thanks for the tip.

Is there any significance to the lock symbol vs. the arrow symbol that appear after the book title?

That has to do with http or https. If you don't like the lock, take off the s.

>19 japaul22: The link works either way, so if it doesn't bother you for it to be there, it doesn't seem to matter for clicking on the link. :-)

Great information from everyone especially from >14 christina_reads: who made it much easier! I just entered a title for the first time (RandomCAT September).

>22 VivienneR: Aww, thanks! Glad I could help. :)

This isn't the same as a wiki issue or question, but mathgirl has offered to help me figure out why a couple of images I tried to post were so big and I wasn't able to make them smaller, so this is a test for her to take a look at. Thank you, mathgirl!

ETA: I tried it with a width of 200 to start, then tried with 100 and the image size didn't change.

>24 LibraryCin: Are you using this exact text to post? Try copying and pasting this line into a new post and see what happens.

<img width="200" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/475982978107973632/Aam5yzNP.jpeg">

This is what I'm using to get the image below:


ETA: when I looked at the HTML source, your link for post #24 did not actually show the width="200" part, so for some reason, it is not getting included in your post.

Well, that's really odd! I wonder why it's not "seeing" it!

Trying by copying mathgirl's text (and yes, that was exactly what it looked like when I posted it!):

Very very odd. I wonder why it wasn't registering that I entered the width!!!! It was (still is, if I click edit on my original post) there!

>28 LibraryCin: I had a similar issue which was caused by the " being written slightly differently depending on which computer, which programme and which language I used. When writing directly on LT, it is: " But when writing in OpenOffice, it is: “ or ”. No big differences, but enough to influence the html functionality.

>29 Chrischi_HH: Ah, that might explain it! I've run into a similar problem before. I normally write my reviews in Google Docs before copying and pasting them into my LT posts. It used to change my quotation marks to slanted quotes, which caused errors with my LT posts. I solved that problem by going in "Preferences" under the "Tools" menu and unchecking the "Use smart quotes" option.

>29 Chrischi_HH: Oh, that is interesting. Maybe that's what did it...

>24 LibraryCin: Now that this is resolved, it would be nice if the big picture could be edited to not throw the whole page out of whack, please.

>32 MarthaJeanne: OK, I just removed it!

Thanks. The page looks better now.