Editing Pages

How to edit the pages on the Rebel Toolkit web site. Any rebel with a Communications Hub login can edit pages.

This page explains the nuts and bolts of editing the pages of the Rebel Toolkit. For a more general introduction to the Rebel Toolkit, and suggestions for what you might like to add, see the Toolkit Introduction chapter. You can also make small changes, for example to fix a typo, correct a link or add extra information.

Signing Up and Logging In

In order to edit the content on this web site, you need to be logged in.

The user accounts on this web site are tied to the accounts on the Communications Hub. See below for more information about the Communications Hub.

To sign up to this web site, click the 'Sign up' link at the top of the home page. Make sure you click on the SIGN UP WITH UK HUB button first and ignore the name, email and password fields on the Sign Up page. You will need your Hub user name and password, unless you are already logged in to the Hub.

Logging in subsequently is done also with your Hub user name and password. Click on LOGIN WITH XR UK HUB on the Log In page.

New users have the ability to edit any page, so please be careful.

Note that this web site is visible to the general public, so don't add anything that should not be visible.

Editing Pages

This web site runs on a software package called BookStack. Their home page is at https://www.bookstackapp.com/. We have our own copy of BookStack running on one of our servers in Switzerland.

The user documentation is at https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/. We won't duplicate that here, but we will add things which are specific to this site or need extra clarification.

BookStack supports two different page editors called WYSIWYG and Markdown. We have chosen to use the Markdown editor for this site. Note that the BookStack demo referenced on their home page, while good for gaining an understanding of BookStack, is configured to use the WYSIWYG editor. This is a site-wide setting and can't be adjusted per user, because the pages are stored in a different format by the two editors.

You canTo edit the pages on this web site, for example to fix a typo, correct a link or add extra information.

To do this:page:

1. You need to sign up and log in

2. Then go to the page you want to edit.

3. Click the Edit button

On wide screens a sidebar will appear on the left hand side which includes an Edit link.

On narrow screens, you have to click the Info tab at the top of the page to make the sidebar appear.

The editor accepts both Markdown and HTML. You may find that the page that you are editing is in Markdown or HTML or a mixture of both. For example in Markdown a bold word is indicated like this: **bold words** (rendered as 'bold words'). In HTML, you get the same effect with <b>bold words</b> (rendered as 'bold words').

For information about Markdown see: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/basics and https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax. You may wish to get yourself a summary of the Markdown codes by searching on the Internet for 'Markdown cheat sheet' -- there are lots.

See the Markdown Hints page for more information about Markdown.

For plain text content, no special markup is needed. Put a blank line between paragraphs.

It is a good idea to keep a copy of your text yourself locally in case it gets lost, through computer failure or user action. This can done by clicking in the editing area and doing Ctrl-A (Select All), Ctrl-C (Copy), then open Notepad, Ctrl-V (Paste), Ctrl-S (Save) and choose a place and name for it. These are the instructions for Windows. It will be similar for other operating systems.

When you have made your changes, make them visible by clicking Save Page in the top right hand corner.

Creating New Pages

You can create a new page by going to the Book or Chapter where you want the new page, and clicking New Page in the sidebar. You can change the order of pages by clicking Sort later, which lets you set the exact order you want.

Start your page with a sentence that gives some more detail as to what the page may be about in addition to the title. The first line or two appear in the book contents lists and on search results, so this makes it easier for readers to find the page they want.

Split your text into multiple pages if necessary. If pages are too short, it is hard to find things using find-in-page in your browser, as you have to do it separately for every page. If the pages are too long, they become hard to take in. Also on a long page, you may have so many headings that the Page Navigation on the left (wide screens only -- on a narrow screen it is on the Info tab) becomes taller than the height of a typical screen.

Headings

Another way to stop the Page Navigation getting too long is to make headings at the lowest level which don't appear in the Page Navigation by just using a short bold paragraph, like the one above, which looks like a heading but just uses bold markup **Headings**.

Tags

Do add suitable tags to the page. It will becvome clear in time what tags are most helpful. Please just invent them for the moment.

Shelves and Books

If you think we should have another Shelf or another Book, please discuss it on the appropriate Mattermost channel or forum first so that we keep some kind of coherence. (Each Shelf needs to have a note of where discussions should be held). For the moment, use the channel and forum described on the Contact Us page.

Only users with the higher level of permissions (Editors) can create new Shelves. Anyone can now create new books, but feel free to ask for advice about the most suitable name and location first.