Help:Upload
From Sustainable Ballard
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The importance of uploading
Before going into the mechanics of how you can upload files to this wiki, a few words of encouragement. A wiki is a great place to keep track of everything your group is doing, so you should think of it as your online repository. Any document, flier, poster, photo, or anything else you used in your activities will at some point be useful, to save time when something similar is needed. It's great if all that stuff is all available in one place that is accessible by everyone 24/7, without having to search through someone's laptop, or some backup CDs, not to mention that group members come and go, and it may be impossible to get some things back.
Clearly, it's also important to keep all this work organized. This means creating appropriate wiki pages with links to the various files, categorized in a meaningful way. In an upcoming wiki tip you'll learn how to make links to uploaded files. The great thing about a wiki is that it's collaborative and self-organizing, so if you add some content, or upload a file, even without knowing exactly where it belongs, someone else will probably at some point come along and organize it. (This, of course, implies that you will be that someone for content that somebody else creates, too.)
So, when in doubt, just upload it! Soon enough, you'll learn how to structure the wiki content, too.
How do I upload a picture, flyer, spreadsheet,...?
Easy! Scroll down until you see the toolbox in the left sidebar menu. One of the menu items is Upload file. Click it!
(If you want to both read these instructions and try it out at the same time, it helps to open a separate browser window or tab)
The Upload file page asks you for a few things:
- Source filename: click the Browse... button next to it to find the file you want to upload.
- Destination filename: change this if you want to give the file a different name on the wiki. You can usually just leave this empty.
- Summary: This is optional. Type some description in this field, if other users of the wiki could be confused about this file.
Then there are two checkboxes, which you should normally leave as they are:
- Watch this page: by default this is checked. This means that after you upload your file, it will be added to your watchlist, so you can easily find out if anyone makes any changes to it. Remember, a wiki is self-organizing and community driven, so it's good to have at least one user watching any given page, and the one who created a page is a good candidate for watching it.
- Ignore any warnings: if you are not really sure, you should not check this.
When you are ready, click the Upload file button.
What happens after you upload
If you are lucky, there will be a new wiki page with the name of the file and the word Image: in front of it. That's normal. All uploads end up having the Image: prefix, whether they are pictures or not.
The file is too big
If you are trying to upload a file that is just too large, the wiki will prevent you from doing that. Email your wikimaster for help, specifying what warning you got.
The file already exists
A file with the same name has already been uploaded before. It may be the same file, a new version of the same file, or a completely unrelated file that just happens to have the same name. The warning you get has a link to the previously uploaded file, so you can check which case applies to your situation. You can click Save file to upload anyway, if you want to replace the file that was previously uploaded. The good thing about a wiki is that nothing gets lost - even if you upload the same file again, the previous version can still be restored. So don't worry!
The file type is not allowed on this wiki
Some files are "dangerous", and the wiki will not allow you to upload them. Email your wikimaster for help, specifying what warning you got.