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= How do you get started with Wikis? = Information from: http://www.wikispaces.com

=Welcome to Your New Wiki= Whether this is your first wiki ever or just your first wiki of the day, we’re happy to have you on board. This wiki is basically your own personal Web site with an edit button. You get to choose who can see it, and who can make changes, and you can use it to do almost anything you can imagine. We put this document together to get you started and give you a glimpse of what you can do as the organizer of this wiki.

What it means to be a wiki organizer
Wiki organizers handle the administration of the wiki. As an organizer of this wiki, you have some special powers that other members won’t have. These are just a few:
 * Setting permissions for the whole wiki
 * Managing wiki members
 * Changing the look and feel
 * Locking pages so no one can edit them
 * Deleting or renaming files and pages

And whenever you decide you want a little more help with your wiki, you can promote other members to organizers, as well.

Special wikis for educators
We offer a free upgrade for wikis that are used exclusively for K–12 or Higher Education. These wikis are **free** and **ad-free**, and you can make them **private** for extra security for your students. These wikis also come with a User Creator tool that lets you **open student accounts in bulk** — with or without student email addresses.

If you’re not sure whether you started this wiki on a free plan for educators, go to **Manage Wiki**. After **Subscription**, you should see, “This wiki is currently on our free **K–12** plan,” or “This wiki is currently on our free **Higher Education** plan.”

If it does not say this, go to **Manage Wiki** > **Subscription**, scroll down to the “Complimentary upgrades for educators” heading, and click **Request your free K–12 plan wiki,** or **Request your free Higher Education wiki.**

Any time you want to create a new K–12 wiki, go to [|this page].

If you want to create a new Higher Education wiki, you can go to [|this page].

=Getting Started with Your Wiki=

Editing the home page
When you’re ready to get started, hit the **Edit** button on the home page of your wiki. Just jump right in and play around. If you want a little extra guidance, check out our [|video tours]. And if you run into any serious trouble, shoot us an email at help@wikispaces.com.

Setting up site navigation
As you add more and more pages to your wiki, you’ll probably start thinking about how visitors are going to navigate through your wiki.

Your default navigation bar contains a Page List widget that lists the first ten pages of your wiki in alphabetical order. If you decide that you want to arrange it differently, you can click the **Edit Navigation** link and delete the blue Page List widget. Then you can edit the navigation bar just like you would edit a wiki page to add links and explanatory text. If you need assistance, our [|video tours] will show you how to edit a page.
 * Your navigation bar**

If you want to get your default navigation back, click the widget tool in the editor bar (it looks like a little TV) then click **Wikispaces**, then **List of Wiki Pages**.

You can also build navigation right into the pages themselves. When you link to a new page, you create a path for the visitor to follow. You could, for example, create one page called Projects that is just a list of links. Then, every time you added a new link to that page, you would actually be creating both a page for that project, //and// an easy-to-follow path to that project.
 * Linking pages**

=Getting to Know Your Manage Wiki Tools= The **Manage Wiki** link in your sidebar will take you to the nerve center of your wiki. Here you can customize your wiki and handle administration. Let me introduce you to a few of the tools that people tend to use most often:

Members

 * Add new members and remove old ones
 * Approve or reject pending membership requests
 * Promote members to organizers when you need extra help

Pages

 * View a sortable list of pages in your wiki
 * See when the last edit was made, and who made it
 * Lock, unlock, or delete pages singly or in bulk
 * Edit page tags

Files

 * View a sortable list of files in your wiki
 * See file details
 * Upload files
 * Delete files in bulk
 * Edit file tags

Permissions

 * Decide who can view or edit your wiki
 * Manage permissions for individual wiki pages

Invite People

 * Send an email to invite friends, students, coworkers, or collaborators to join your wiki

Look and Feel

 * Set the colors and theme of your wiki
 * Upload a custom logo
 * Design a custom theme for your wiki (requires knowledge of HTML and CSS)
 * Modify your wiki style sheet (requires knowledge of CSS)

=Getting People Involved= Once you’ve got your wiki customized and working, you’re going to want to share this collaborative space with other people.

Invite people to your wiki
Go to **Manage Wiki** > **Invite People** to send an invitation email to the folks who will be collaborating in your wiki. Just type in up to 100 email addresses or Wikispaces usernames, separated by commas or line breaks, and hit **Send**.

Let people join
When visitors like your wiki, they can use the **Join** link to request membership. You’ll be able to approve or deny these requests at **Manage Wiki** > **Members**.

==Add accounts with the User Creator tool (K–12, Higher Education, and Super wikis only)== If you are a teacher and need to add a whole class’ worth of student accounts, you can do it all at once by going to **Manage Wiki** > **User Creator**. You will be able to make accounts for all of your students, even if they don’t have email addresses.

Keep in mind that every Wikispaces username must be unique. Try using numbers, or initials, or a first name-last name combination to create unique usernames.

//Still have questions? Send us an email at help@wikispaces.com.//