The Wiki4D page seriously needs a big fat "CREATE LOGIN" button slapped at the top and bottom of every page.
I was going to edit a page, but I gave up looking for how to create an account after about 10 minutes of poking around.  I found the guest book, which taunts me by saying "many people who visit become contributors" ... but HOW??

--bb

== Quote from Bill Baxter (wbaxter@gmail.com)'s article
> The Wiki4D page seriously needs a big fat "CREATE LOGIN" button slapped
> at the top and bottom of every page.
> I was going to edit a page, but I gave up looking for how to create an
> account after about 10 minutes of poking around.  I found the guest
> book, which taunts me by saying "many people who visit become
> contributors" ... but HOW??
> --bb

I'm sorry to hear you had trouble understanding what you needed to do, but I'm not sure what you were having trouble with. (I've been editing pages in Wiki4D for several years, so I don't really remember what it's like to be a new user of Wiki4D. But I'd like to try to help to make it easier for new people to use.)

Did you see the "Welcome Visitor" screen? The key instructions are "You are welcome to edit pages in this wiki, but please enter your name in your 'Preferences' section".

Did you find the "Preferences" button? It should be at the top and bottom of the page on the right side.

On the preferences page, I think all should need to do then is enter a username and click the "save preferences" button. Then you should be able to edit whichever page you'd like to edit.

I didn't write the wiki software, but I can change quite a few things by editing the template or the the WelcomeVisitor page. What specifically was unclear or needed further explanation?

Justin Calvarese wrote:
> == Quote from Bill Baxter (wbaxter@gmail.com)'s article
> 
>>The Wiki4D page seriously needs a big fat "CREATE LOGIN" button slapped
>>at the top and bottom of every page.
>>I was going to edit a page, but I gave up looking for how to create an
>>account after about 10 minutes of poking around.  I found the guest
>>book, which taunts me by saying "many people who visit become
>>contributors" ... but HOW??
>>--bb
> 

Hi.  Thanks for the reply.

> I'm sorry to hear you had trouble understanding what you needed to do, but I'm not
> sure what you were having trouble with. (I've been editing pages in Wiki4D for
> several years, so I don't really remember what it's like to be a new user of
> Wiki4D. But I'd like to try to help to make it easier for new people to use.)
> 
> Did you see the "Welcome Visitor" screen? The key instructions are "You are
> welcome to edit pages in this wiki, but please enter your name in your
> 'Preferences' section".
> 
> Did you find the "Preferences" button? It should be at the top and bottom of the
> page on the right side.
> 
> On the preferences page, I think all should need to do then is enter a username
> and click the "save preferences" button. Then you should be able to edit whichever
> page you'd like to edit.

Yep I saw that, entered a name, and it gave me a response like "invalid username" so I figured that meant I had to make an account first.  Is there some sort of restriction on what constitutes a valid user name?

--bb

Bill Baxter wrote:
> 
> Yep I saw that, entered a name, and it gave me a response like "invalid username" so I figured that meant I had to make an account first.  Is there some sort of restriction on what constitutes a valid user name?
> 
> --bb

Not sure, but it might have to be CamelCase, BillBaxter for instance.

-- 
Lars Ivar Igesund
blog at http://larsivi.net
DSource & #D: larsivi

== Quote from Bill Baxter (wbaxter@gmail.com)'s article
> Yep I saw that, entered a name, and it gave me a response like "invalid username" so I figured that meant I had to make an account first.  Is there some sort of restriction on what constitutes a valid user name? --bb

I don't know what the rule is, but something like FirstnameLastname should work. It probably wants you to start with a capital letter and have at least another capital letter in their somewhere. Kind of like a WikiWord. If you look at the News page (http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?browse=RecentChanges), you can see what other people have used as usernames.

jcc7 wrote:
> == Quote from Bill Baxter (wbaxter@gmail.com)'s article
>> Yep I saw that, entered a name, and it gave me a response like "invalid
>> username" so I figured that meant I had to make an account first.  Is
>> there some sort of restriction on what constitutes a valid user name?
>> --bb
> 
> I don't know what the rule is, but something like FirstnameLastname should work.
> It probably wants you to start with a capital letter and have at least another
> capital letter in their somewhere. Kind of like a WikiWord. If you look at the
> News page (http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?browse=RecentChanges), you can
> see what other people have used as usernames.

I see.   The "edit preferences" page is definitely not clear about that.  It just says "e.g. PeterSmith".  Not that "It must be OneWordCamelCase just like PeterSmith".

And the error page that comes up if you violate that rule is no help either.  It just says the username is invalid, not what rule you broke.

I added an explanation of that to the GuestBook page.  Looks like that's the best I can do as a mere user.  It would be best, though, if the Preferences page could have short blurb explaining the rules for usernames.

--bb