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. You will have a contributor webpage set up that will allow you to cite your contributions to your webpage using your username, explained below.

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'''''

Default subheadings for plant webpages are provided in the editing window of each page that has been created. However, if they do not have any information yet they are hidden by being placed between the text <!-- and -->, which makes it hidden. If you delete this text then the subheadings will appear on the readable page.

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, if the contributor's user name is KMR, he would write, "The plant is a perennial. ([[KMR]])", which will appear as "The plant is a perennial (KMR).". This hyperlink connects to your contributor webpage.

Please fill out your contributor webpage with all of the information that you would like a reader to know. This page can include links to a personal or professional web page where contact information may be more secure.

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. This can be used to add specific notes about an observation or cite published literature.

If the same source is going to be cited multiple times on the same page, the first time you cite the source, type <ref name="short name of reference">, followed by the reference, then </ref>. Then every time afterward you can just write <ref name="short name of reference"/> and it cites the reference.

Create links to other pages

Links to external webpages can be inserted. For example, typing ([http://plants.usda.gov NRCS]) will appear as NRCS linked to the USDA NRCS database.

Links to other pages within Coastal Plain Plants can be made by using double brackets. For example [[Dyschoriste oblongifolia]] will return Dyschoriste oblongifolia.

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.