Ocassionally, our pages mess up because of a PBwiki bug. If that’s the case, then of course you should let somebody at support@pbwiki.com know and they’ll help you get things back to normal. However, a lot of cases are our own doing, and it is sometimes frustrating to see our pages look like a wreck for a few hours while we wait for support’s answer, no matter how prompt it might be.

Below, I’m going to show you a few tips you can use to take your wiki into your own hands when a boo-boo comes along. Support is of course always available either officially through support@pbwiki.com or by users like you through the forums, but a couple steps towards independence can be a welcome skill for any user.

(more…)

Author’s Note: Wordpress garbled my code at the bottom of this page for the auto-generated index. It’s fixed now (April 5, 2007).

Celebrating National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day really gave me a moment to pause and reflect on the core concepts of PBwiki. Like a PBJ sandwich, PBwiki is about solid, satisfying simplicity, and sometimes, I think I forget that, looking for the filet mignon of the wiki world. Sure, it’s natural: I was originally brought on to the crew as a “Javascript Hacker.” I spend my free time doing silly things like making Tetris run in my wiki (programmed from scratch, FYI). Sometimes, the basic wiki stuff just gets lost on me.

To refocus, I’ve decided that about every other TOTW entry will be aimed primarily at hitting some foundational aspect of the PBwiki concept, which will be useful for our newer users and maybe a few veterans as well. Today, I’m gonna begin with ideas for navigating and finding pages in your wiki...

(more…)

I’m a little bit late with this post, but should be back on track this week. Last time, we discussed how to create a PBwiki Identity. Now, we’re gonna take a look at how to best use Identities for two aspects of wiki management, handling multiple wikis with one account and controlling access to a wiki on a per-user basis.

(more…)

Last year, PBwiki rolled out a neat new feature called PBwiki Identities. The general idea was that PBwiki users within the system would be treated as individuals rather than being connected to a specific wiki. This way, a user could manage multiple wikis without keeping track of all the passwords (there was also more control in wiki-administration).

As a quick note, a PBwiki Identity password is COMPLETELY separate from the password of any wiki you may have created. Here’s the order of how things should usually happen:

1. You create a new wiki, let’s say it’s at totallysweet.pbwiki.com (as of this entry, that wiki is up for grabs, just so you know). Furthermore, we’ll say that the password is abc123.
2. You start contributing in a few wikis, and you hate logging in to each one separately. So you go to http://my.pbwiki.com and create an Identity. Your Identity email is coolguy@someISP.com and your password is zyx987.
3. You enter your Identity page and enter the names and passwords for all the wikis in which you participate. In this case, you would put totallysweet for the wiki name and abc123 for the wiki-wide password.
   1. Alternately, somebody might invite you to participate in his/her wiki, to which you’ll be added as soon as you approve (by e-mail link). In this case, no password will exchange hands.
4. Now, you can login to all your wikis at one time just by going to my.pbwiki.com and logging in to your Identity with your email address (coolguy@someISP.com) and the password zyx987. Note that from this point on, you won’t need to login to totallysweet.pbwiki.com separately, nor do you need to use its specific password, abc123. You will also be automatically logged in to any wikis to which you were officially invited. Awesome huh?

(more…)

Jason Nguyen

Last week, I gave you some ideas to start optimizing your images for web upload, looking at file size and compression type (JPEG or GIF). This time, we assume that you have your file created and uploaded, and we begin to explore the various ways you can present that image in a page, focusing on alignment and borders.

This week, Oscar the Panda is on vacation, so I have Slippy here as my assistant. Say hi to Slippy!

(more…)

Jason Nguyen

Anybody who designs a website, be it a wiki or any other kind of site, will eventually come to realize that an all-text site is one of the most boring things ever, and although some of that is helped with some well-placed colors and styles, you’ll eventually need some images to spice things up.

PBwiki makes the image upload process very easy, and the basic layout options are simple. However, before we even begin the layout process, the first step to making optimum images begins well in advance. This week, we’ll take a look at how to prep your images before you upload them, and next week, we’ll discover some neat ways to present them in your wiki.

(more…)

Jason Nguyen

In last week’s entry, I discussed some of the more basic aspects of the new Point-and-Click editor. This week, we continue exploring the editor, looking at the following aspects (click the links to go directly to that section):

• Plugins are probably the most powerful of the new additions to PBwiki, and once used correctly are a simple way to integrate eye-catching and effective widgets into your wiki.
• The formatting options of the P&C editor are more flexible than in the old editor, but for them to be effective, you should pick the right one for the job.
• The SOURCE button allows users to see the underlying HTML of the wiki page being editing. You’ll find out below whether you need it.
• Sometimes, you’ll need to insert code snippets. Look below for the most effective ways to use HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.

(more…)

The Point-and-Click editor has received mostly positive feedback since it was unveiled, but of course with all new things, there are some growing pains, both in terms of technical work (bugs) and users’ comfort with the new system. To aid in this cause, I’m offering a two part series on how to get the most out of the Point-and-Click Editor.

(more…)

PBwiki does an amazing job of maintaining cross-browser compatibility in its basic design, so much so that people have told me about editing their wikis from their Blackberries. The designers work hard getting layouts and skins to look the same in every major browser, and for the most part, you’ll never ever have to think about making sure your page looks the same in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc. That’s awesome.

Nonetheless, as people spend more time with their wikis, they will undoubtedly experiment. Maybe they learn a little HTML and create a few layouts within the content area. Maybe they are even more experimental and learn CSS to skin their wiki in bold new ways. Maybe they are really ambitious and begin fiddling with Javascript. Regardless of the situation, and especially if your browser of choice is not Internet Explorer, you’ll want to know that things look okay in other browsers. (more…)

Because the last tip was only really useful to Classic wiki users, I’ve pushed up the next tip on CSS styles to this week. Enjoy!

A lot of gibberish gets thrown around by some of the advanced PBwiki users, particularly those with experience in web design, including HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the code that makes up every webpage on the Internet and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the current standard for formatting and styling HTML. Today, we’re going to focus on CSS as a way to format parts of your wiki the way you want, using specific examples. Although I plan on explaining CSS more thoroughly in a future post, I won’t go into the details for now, focusing on getting you real results. (more…)