Purpose

There are many different places that members and especially volunteers add page markup. While, this is a positive thing, we need to try to do so in a compatibile way.

The End Result

EB Pages are XHTML 1.0 Strict. For the most people, that has little to no impact. The average user need only ensure that the XML (HTML) document is well formed.

Wiki Guidelines

In general, use as much non-HTML wiki markup as possible. Avoid using the <br/>, <p/>, <b>, <i> and <u> HTML elements just to name a few. This way we can more easily control the quality of the page layout.

Check out are easy Wiki editing cheat sheet.

Wiki Links

Wiki links deserve special attention. The number one mistake people have made is around linkage issues.

There are three kinds of links and it is important to understand the difference.

External links to other sites

[http://somesite.com/somepage.html label for link] 

Local wiki links

[[Page Name |label for link]]

It is VERY important to use local links when possible as they have very special features associated with them. Notice the (|) symbol between the page name and the label.

Links to Wikipedia

[[:en:Page Name |label for link]]

Wiki's have a special ability to link internally and to other wiki's. Wikipedia is setup already for namespace en.

Don't forget about the page formatting cheat sheet.

Forum Guidelines

Use the forum style markup only.

HTML Guidelines

For the most part this applied to the volunteers, but it good reading for users who wish to embed html in the wiki pages (not advised, but not forbidden).

Definitions

Element 

a.k.a. Tag, A structural part of the XML document. For example, <p> </p> is a paragraph element.

Attribute 

A property of an element expressed as name and value pair. For example, <p style="font-color:red"></p> is a paragraph element whose text will be displayed in the color red.

Well Formed Document

This is the MOST IMPORTANT thing to know about HTML editing. In the earlier versions of HTML, it did not have to well formed, but now it does.

• For every start element there is a end element.
• Elements are properly nested
• All attributes have a value
• All attribute values ar quoted with double quotes