Before editing any page in Waihekepedia, contributors should read our guidelines for contribution. This is critical if we are to keep Waihekepedia a reliable source of information about one of the greatest islands on earth.
Creating an account lets you edit and create Waihekepedia pages and gives you many benefits, including increased editing options and user preferences. All good Waihekians should get one.
See: Creating an Account for information on how to create an account.
Anything about Waiheke Island as outlined our guidelines for contribution. If you would like to contribute but don't have an idea what to start with, here is a list of pages that people would like to see: Special:WantedPages. It's also a good start to simply edit existing pages and add content to them or update and correct information. No worries that you changes might be going in the wrong direction. It's always possible to reactivate the old content. In fact it is pretty common for pages to be changed over and over. There will never be such a thing as a final version.
Type the word or phrase you want to add in the search box on the left and click go. This will take you to a page not found page with a message at the top "No page with this exact title exists, trying full text search." Click on the this exact title to create a new page with the name that you searched for.
To start editing a MediaWiki page, click the Edit this page (or just edit) link at one of its edges. This brings you to the edit page: a page with a text box containing the wikitext - the editable code from which the server produces the finished page.
See: Editing Basics for more help.
You can just type your text. However, also using basic wiki markup (described in the next section) to make links and do simple formatting adds to the value of your contribution.
You might want to add your page to the categories it belongs to by adding the appropriate category information. E.g on a a page about beaches you might want to add:
[[Category:Beaches]]
You can add as many categories to a page as you see fit. For a list of available categories see Special:Categories
When you have finished, click Show preview to see how your changes will look before you make them permanent. Repeat the edit/preview process until you are satisfied, then click Save page and your changes will be immediately applied to the article.
Read about adding and formatting images here
While most users will use user names, utter anonymity kills the idea of a community wiki. So when you have edited your first page, go to the Recent Changes page and click on your user name. A page for your details will come up. You don't need to put your real name but let other editors and users know something about you and your interests.