Help:Getting started with Saintapedia

Anyone can view and search content on the USApedia. Please consider going beyond reading and joining the community by helping improve the contents of the wiki or create new pages on the wiki. You will need to create an account.

Account advantages

• Fix anything you see wrong on any article (factual, spelling, grammar, or formatting)
• Track changes made to USApedia articles
• Choose an appropriate username and then and create your . You can now collaborate, share information about yourself, or just practice editing and publishing (in your own sandbox, for example).
• From your user page, you can view a convenient list of all your contributions (edits), and use the watchlist to monitor changes made to pages that interest you.
• Discuss edits to articles with other editors using talk page.
• Having an account allows you to rename pages and upload files.

Creating an Account

• Watch the tutorial video
• Steps for creating your account
• First steps after creating your account
• Familiarize yourself with What Not To Post On USApedia.

Learn the Interface

• USApedia interface - Click on yellow boxes of the screen to learn more about each part of wiki.

Resources

• Help page
• Cheat sheet

Get Training

• See USApedia training
• Tutorial (USApedia) and Learning to edit the wiki

Email confirmation

After you have created your account, you should receive an email called USApedia e-mail address confirmation. Please open the email, read it, and click on the link under the text saying

"BY CLICKING THE LINK BELOW, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ THIS AGREEMENT, UNDERSTAND IT, AND WILL BE BOUND BY ITS TERMS AND CONDITIONS"

If you do not get your email confirmation, please check to make sure you typed your email address correctly. This can be done at

• Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo if you are logged into USApedia

See Help:Email confirmation for additional details.

First steps after account creation

After you create your account, it is recommended that you:

• Familiarize yourself with the the USApedia interface
• Review the Cheat sheet page.
• Learn about article histories
• Get to know the Help pages.

The USApedia interface

Clickable Image Tour
Click on the yellow boxes for a explanation of portion of the screen.

Learning to edit the wiki

USApedia has many resources to help you to edit the wiki:

• The editing cheat sheet
• The Help pages:
  • All topics

USApedia runs on the MediaWiki platform, which is the same platform used by Wikipedia. Both the MediaWiki and Wikipedia sites use the same basic markup as USApedia, and provide excellent resources for new wiki users. For WikiPedia, be aware some extended features are discussed, but the basics for editing an article are the same. If you are not sure, test Wikipedia examples by pasting them in your Sandbox to see if it works the same.

• MediaWiki Help Content - This link includes help on tasks that are common to all MediaWiki sites, and includes navigation, searching, basic article editing tasks, and advanced article editing topics.
• Editing Wikipedia - This article is about editing Wikipedia, but it applies to USApedia as well.
• Wikipedia Cheat sheet - This Cheat sheet contains a summary of the most frequently used wikitext. The average user can do 99%+ of what they need with the information from this cheat sheet.
• Wikitext - This article contains detailed information about wikitext (wiki markup), including how and when to apply different types of markup. If it's not on the cheat sheet, look on this page.

New confirmation email

If you are getting the error "not authenticated " and you cannot find your confirmation email, you can ask USApedia to send you a new one:

1. Log into USApedia
2. Check Special:Preferences to make sure you entered your email address correctly when creating your account. See Help:Preferences for more information.
3. Go to Special:ConfirmEmail
4. Click on “Mail a confirmation code” button
5. Read the contents of the email and click on the link under "BY CLICKING THE LINK BELOW, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ THIS AGREEMENT, UNDERSTAND IT, AND WILL BE BOUND BY ITS TERMS AND CONDITIONS"

The email will have text pulled from MediaWiki:Confirmemail body.

Email options section in Preferences

Email confirmation needed

File:Mail a new confirmation email.png

Mail a new confirmation email

Where to change your email address

File:Confirm USApedia email address.png

Confirm email

Screenshots of various steps in the confirmation process