The Reeves Project Learning Series

This is one of a series of pages to guide you through a single activity. In this Step 6, you will link wiki pages together so that you can navigate from father to offspring and back again. You may find it helpful to print this page so you can refer to these notes as you continue to work along. To see a list of the first six parts in our First Steps guide, click here.

Linking to Existing Wiki Pages

One of the great features of a Wiki is the ability to link content together, in much the same way that family historians aim to link individuals. You are encouraged to create links for an individual to the Person Pages for his Father, Mother and offspring, where there is enough known information to justify a new page for that individual.

So before you go any further, you need to create pages for two or three related individuals, perhaps a father and a couple of his children. For now, please don't create pages for women who marry into your Reeves line, we will cover that later. The guidance for creating new person pages is covered in First Steps part 5.

We're going to use Alpha Test REEVEZ whose wiki page was name Reevez_Alpha_Test_76543 and his father Charlie Test REEVEZ (on page Reevez_Charlie_Test_76542) in our example.

Wiki mark up language for creating a link (that is a link from one Wiki page to another) use a double pair of round brackets and a vertical bar separator as follows (( | )).

• The target wiki page name is placed between the opening pair of round brackets and the vertical bar separator. Make sure there are NO space characters before or after the wiki page name.
• The text which is to act as the link is placed between the vertical bar separator and the closing pair of round brackets.

For example ((Target_Page_Name|click here))

On page Reevez_Alpha_Test_76543, we currently have a line which reads

__Father:__ Reevez, Charlie Test

Replace the words "Reevez, Charlie Test" with the wiki link mark up instructions

((Reevez_Charlie_Test_76542|Reevez, Charlie Test))

so the line now reads

__Father:__ ((Reevez_Charlie_Test_76542|Reevez, Charlie Test))

The content of the page will read the same, but the words "Reevez, Charlie Test" are now a wiki link to Alpha's father.

Having made the corresponding change to your page, you should preview the page. If you see a blue question mark after the link text, the "Reevez, Charlie Test" in our example, that is an indication that the target page does not exist, so check that you've correctly typed the full wiki page name for the target individual. Do not be tempted to click on the blue question mark as that will take you away from the current page (which is not yet saved) and create a new page with a page name as currently entered in the wiki link.

Once you are happy that everything is OK, remember to click on the SAVE button. If you can't get the link working as you'd like, click SAVE anyway and ask your mentors for guidance.

Wiki links only work in a single direction. So to have father Charlie Test REEVEZ linked to his son, we also need to edit Charlie's page and add a wiki link to his son. On Charlie's page click the Edit box located at the bottom of the page. The appropriate part of the narrative section of Charlie's page currently reads

__Known Children of Charlie Reeves and Elizabeth (nee mnu)__
# Elizabeth Test Reevez born c1875, Eling HAM, m John SMITH
# Alpha Test Reevez born 1881, Eling HAM
# Bravo Test Reevez born 1883, Dibden HAM

(The optional paired double underscore characters tells tiki to format this text between the double underscore characters in bold font. The number/hash sign tells tiki to automatically number these lines, which makes it easier to add new children to the list, particularly inserting entries between existing rows.)

To add a wiki link from father Charlie to son Alpha's wiki page, the third line above would be changed to read
# ((Reevez_Alpha_Test_76543|Alpha Test Reevez)) born 1881, Eling HAM

Again having made the corresponding change in your page, please make sure you preview the page and that everything reads as you intend, before clicking on the SAVE button.

Linking to New Wiki Pages

It is perfectly acceptable to enter a wiki link to a target page that does not yet exist. For example, if you intend entering a father and then several children, you can create wiki links to the children from the father's page before creating the pages for each of the children. This avoids having to repeatedly return to the father's page to edit in each new child. Two words of warning though.

Firstly, make sure you know each of these children have not already been added by another community member. So as part of your preparation for entering this family, you need to search and ensure that pages do not currently exist for any of the family members. You would also be well advised to write down the full wiki page name you intend to use for each of the individual family member, that is a list in the format FamilyName_GivenNames_RandomNumberSufffix and mark off each individual as you complete their page.

Secondly, having created the page for the head of the family, you are advised NOT to click on any of the blue question marks following the children's names. If you do, you will need to manually apply the "Person Page-lite-v2" template in the "Tools" section BEFORE entering any content and remember to apply the "People" category to the new page. (This is OK for experienced users).

New users are advised to create each new person page using the "Add New Wiki Page" link from the left column as illustrated in Getting Started step 5.

Some Background

From FAQ_Linking_Wiki_Pages

Individuals should always be linked when the target Wiki Page already exists. If you did not create the target page, as a matter of courtesy check with its primary author to ensure you both agree the link is valid, that is you both have the same individual in mind. Your mentors can help with this.

Additionally, it is perfectly acceptable to create references to pages that do not yet exist, but which you fully intent to create in the short term (say within the next week).

However, it is undesirable that there should be large numbers of Wanted Pages for individuals. If you don't create the page shortly after creating the reference to it, there is a risk that another community member will create a Wiki Page for the same individual. But they may, quite independently, choose a slightly different form of name and are highly likely to choose a different random number suffix.

Next Steps

This is the last of the "First Steps" series of notes. Before progressing to the "Moving Along" series, you are encouraged to gain proficiency in entering Person Pages by creating wiki pages for your known Reeves family members. Your mentor team will continue to provide guidance to you.

And Finally

You should now be focused on creating your pages without errors and remembering to include references to all sources cited on a page. Mistakes will still happen and there will be things you encounter within TRP that we've yet to fully explain. As before, your mentors will help you to straighten things out.

Keep your mentors informed of your progress. They will work with you to decide when you're ready to move on to the next stage.

The TRP Mentors