Guidelines

Become a Contributor

To become a contributor, click "Create Account" on the upper right hand side of the page and complete the form. Please send an email introducing yourself to webmaster Kevin Robertson including your username and real name. Contributors not known to the webmaster will not be retained.

Overview

Contributions to Coastal Plain Plants can be made in various ways:

1) Edit pages directly using the guidelines below.

2) Request a plant species form as a Word (docx) file, edit the form, and send it to Kevin Robertson for incorporation into the website.

3) Submit other sources of information, such as notes, databases, documents, etc. relating to Coastal Plain plants, for incorporation into the website.

4) Communicate information directly to Kevin Robertson to be incorporated into the site.

Editing

Coastal Plain Plants uses a Wikimedia platform, the same as used for Wikipedia. A good place to start learning how to edit is this tutorial, and more sophisticated commands can be searched online, but some basic instructions are as follows:

To edit pages, login, then click the "Edit" tab or and of the "Edit" hyperlinks on pages.

After editing, click the "Save Page" button at the bottom, and then it will go back to the front end view.

If there were no edits, then clicking the "Read" tab at the top will bring you back to the front end view.

Italics and bold lettering are specified wit apostrophes (not quotation marks):

''italic'' Use for plant species binomials, e.g. Dyschoriste oblongifolia.

'''bold'''

'''''bold italic'''''

=Heading= looks like

Dyschoriste oblongifolia

==Subheading== e.g. ==Ecology==

===Sub-subheading=== e.g. =Phenology=

Default subheadings are provided in the editing window of each page that we have set up, but they may be hidden between <!-- and -->, which makes it hidden. If you delete this text then the subheadings will appear on the readable page.

Contributors are encouraged to use the default headings for plant species pages, but additional headings can be added as needed and appropriate.

pipe "|" divider: SHIFT + BACKSLASH

: single indent

:: double indent, etc.

* bullet point

Link to an external source: Example: [http://plants.usda.gov NRCS Plants Database] The part after the first space is what will appear as a hyperlink: NRCS Plants Database

Citing Contributions

Contributions should always be cited, but they can be cited in various ways with varying amounts of information.

Cite by Contributor username

Minimally the contributor should be identified by typing his or her initials or last name in double brackets within parentheses after the contribution. For example, "The plant is a perennial. ([[KMR]])", which will appear as "The plant is a perennial (KMR).".

The first time this is done, it will create a hyperlink to a page that is not yet created, so the link will appear red after the page is saved.

If you click on this hyperlink, you will be prompted to edit the new page that has the name you used as the title.

To set up a contributor template for this page, type or paste {{subst:Template:Contributor}} in the editing area.

After saving the page, this will create a template where you can fill in and edit information about yourself. This page can include links to a personal or professional web page where contact information may be more secure. You can also ask the webmaster to set this up for you.

After your Contributor page is created, then a hyperlink to that page can be created by typing the page name in double brackets.

To appear on the list of Contributors, go to the Contributors page, start editing, and insert a link to your page in alphabetical order of Contributors' last names.

To do this, type your username and real name inside double brackets and separated by a pipe, e.g. [[KMR|Kevin Robertson]]. This will provide your name linked to your Contributor page, e.g. Kevin Robertson.

Create footnotes using the <ref> function

Type <ref> followed by the information to be cited and then </ref>. This will insert a hyperlinked superscript number referring to the note, which will appear at the bottom of the page.

Cite literature using Author-Date format

To cite published literature, we suggest using the author-date format, e.g. (Smith and Blackburn 1994), and write or paste the full reference in alphabetical order under the "References" section.

If a reference is going to be used repeatedly on different pages, it can be made into a template.

The first time the reference is cited, type (for example) {{Template:Smith and Blackburn 1994}}. After the page is saved, this will appear as a red hyperlink. If you click that hyperlink, it will bring you to a new page, where you can type in the full reference and save the page. Afterwards, any time you write {{Template:Smith and Blackburn 1994}} in the References section, the full reference will appear after you save the page.

Cite with links to other pages

As described above, links to other pages can be inserted. For example, typing ([http://plants.usda.gov NRCS]) will appear as NRCS linked to the USDA NRCS database.

If the same webpage is cited multiple times on that page, you can use the Author-Date form described above, e.g. (USDA NRCS 2015), and provide the full citation under the References and Notes section along with the link.

Add images

To add an image, it first has to be uploaded. To upload an image, in the sidebar menu under Tools click Upload file and follow the instructions. If the file is too large then it will not allow the image to be uploaded. In that case, the image size will need to be reduced in another software application, such as Microsoft Paint, before uploading. When uploading, note whether or not the format indicator "JPG" is in lowercase or uppercase letters, as references made to the image later are case-sensitive.

Add images to plant species pages

Images can be added to the Taxobox (see below) if there is not one there already, or the Photo Gallery. To add to the Photo Gallery, add one line of information per image in between the gallery opening and closing statements, e.g.:

<gallery widths=180px>

File:Salvia_azurea.jpg|''Salvia azurea'' Photo by Kevin Robertson, Pebble Hill Plantation, GA

</nowiki></gallery></nowiki>

The part after the pipe provides a caption, so it looks like:

• 

  Salvia azurea Photo by Kevin Robertson, Pebble Hill Plantation, GA

Add institution image to Main Page

Add uploaded images to the gallery as described for plant pages, but you can also add a link from the image to your institution's website by adding link=your_institution_URL after the pipe, e.g.:

<gallery>

File:TT_logo_1.jpg|link=http://www.ttrs.org

File:idigbio_logo.jpg|link=http://www.idigbio.org

File:fsu_bio_herb_logo.png|link=http://herbarium.bio.fsu.edu/

</gallery>

Add a new plant species page

• You can make a request to the webmaster to set up a new page or pages, or . . .
• Navigate to the Plant Species page, where the plant species binomials are listed in alphabetical order.
• Start editing.
• In the correct alphabetical location, add a link using the binomial of the new species in double brackets, e.g. [[Dyschoriste oblongifolia]].
• Save the page, and the link appears as a red hyperlink.
• Select the hyperlink, and you will be brought to the new page with the plant's name as the title.
• Type or paste the command {{subst:Template:PlantName}} to bring in the template text.
• Save the page and begin editing

The new page will include a "Taxobox", which is a template for creating the box with the plant name, image, taxonomy, and distribution. The Taxobox will need to be edited. To fill in the Taxobox you will need:

• Uploaded image for the species
• Taxonomic information for the plant, which can be obtained from the NRCS Plants Database or other updated reliable source.
• Uploaded image for the distribution of the species. Most pages so far have used images screen-saved from the NRCS Plants Database.