Tips and Tricks

General

• Before editing, make sure you understand the wiki rules and the License.
• Beginners can read only the Basic Editing Page. It contains 99% the syntax needed for this site.
• Remember that Online documentation is available. It is recommended to use the Sandbox for practice.
• Use the preview capability for checking before actually saving any change. Preview will appear at the bottom of the edit page, below the help box.
• Please fill the Summary, Author and Minor Edit boxes when editing. This makes life much easier to track the changes.
• Please keep the same Author name. Each Author is entitled to a profile page automatically linked to the Author name. You can edit at will your profile page to introduce yourself to readers.
• For long text, it is easier to prepare the text in your favorite editor and then cut/paste into the edit form.

How to quickly create my profile page?

Once your contributions are done, go to the All updates page. Click on your name next to the page changed. This will create your personal profile page ... to edit.

Tables

The quickest way to create a table is to copy / paste from Excel (or Word) and then use the "Convert" button . Table style will be set automatically when saving.

An example, after the "Convert" button, a table will look like this:

||class=tabtable
||! Engine n° ||! Year built ||
|| KL46001    ||       1957||
|| KL46002    ||       1957||
|| KL46003    ||       1964||
|| KL46004    ||       1971||

Uploads

File size is limited at 200Ko. Larger files are accepted on request to the webmaster.

Don't use special characters like +"'(* in file names. I recommend also to avoid blanks and uppercase letters for compatibility with some old systems.

Uploads folders are organized by groups. Life will be easier for the webmaster if files are uploaded in the proper folder (i.e. steam engines in "Steam", tramways in "Urban", ...)

Once uploaded, a file cannot be deleted nor overwritten (this is a security measure). Don't worry about errors: the webmaster will clean up orphaned files.

Pictures

Use the Attach: command to display a picture. Like this:

Attach:TCDD_sincan_s.jpg

The rule of this website is to display thumbnail pictures linking to the full size pictures to allow modem-connected users (as opposed to high speed internet users). Therefore, a different command Mini: will generate the thumbnail and the link to the full size picture.

To do this, use Mini: command instead of Attach: like this:

Mini:haydarpasa001_l.jpg

To go further, add a caption (when the pointer flies over the thumbnail) and a legend like this:

Mini:haydarpasa001_l.jpg"This is the caption"|This is the legend

This is the legend

For the pros, I use a table to display two pictures side by side

(:table class=pictures:) (:cellnr:)Mini:haydarpasa001_l.jpg"This is the caption left" This is the legend left (:cell:)Mini:haydarpasa001_l.jpg"This is the caption right" This is the legend right (:tableend:)

This is the legend left This is the legend right

Remember that each picture ought to have a caption. Railfans like to read: number of unit (loco, train, ...), exact location, date (and time?) of picture.

Picture sizes

Full size picture size should not exceed 1024 x 768 which is the screen size of 90% of the readers. The trend towards larger desktop PC screen is outweighted by laptop and smartphone with smaller screens. Interrestingly, 1024 x 768 is also the size of an Ipad screen.

JPEG quality factor of 90 is usually fine. A good freeware viewer like Irfanview allows resizing and renaming in batch mode.

Default thumbnails pictures are 200 pixels tall.

If this is too large, Mini can produce smaller thumbnails. Use like this:

• Mini1: 150 pixels tall
• Mini2: 100 pixels tall
• Mini3: 300 pixels wide
• Mini4: 200 pixels wide

(:table class=pictures:) (:cellnr:)Mini1:haydarpasa001_l.jpg This thumbnail is 150 pixels tall (:cell:)Mini2:haydarpasa001_l.jpg This thumbnail is 100 pixels tall (:tableend:)

This thumbnail is 150 pixels tall This thumbnail is 100 pixels tall

UTF8 Encoding

This site uses UTF8 encoding to allow special Turkish letters.

I only request to avoid special letters in page names.

For example to create a page name "Çamlık":

• use Camlik as page name
• use directive (:title Çamlık:) in order to display correctly the page name.

Footnotes

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet[^footnote text to appear at the bottom^] ,
consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed non risus. Suspendisse lectus tortor,
dignissim sit amet, adipiscing nec, ultricies sed, dolor. Cras elementum
ultrices diam. Maecenas ligula massa, varius a, semper congue, euismod
non, mi. 

[^#^]

Security

• IP adresses of all the authors is recorded.
• Email addresses are encrypted in the database in order to prevent automatic "farming" from spamers.
• Page history is kept for 3 years to allow quick repair of pages defaced by vandals.
• Some words like "via.gra" or like "amat.eurs-xxx" are forbidden to discourage abuse. Please contact the webmaster if this creates problems.
• External links must be approved by the Administrator to be activated.
• Some pages, critical to the site operation, are locked by a password.
• File size for upload is capped at 200Ko to prevent "stuffing". Larger file are not a problem, contact the administrator to upload them.
• Uploaded files cannot be deleted nor overwritten. Only the administrator can delete uploads
• Upload of some file types are forbidden to prevent uploading of active program like viruses.
• Group creation is locked.
• Only the administrator can lock pages.
• The administrator gets a mail report each time the site is updated.
• And finally, the content is routinely and securely backed up outside the server.

And finally, the whole security is based around the concept of quick repair in case of attack: defaced content can be restored in seconds.