On our home page and on the Photographs and Information page, there is a link to a wiki page called Upload File. Click on it. You can also go directly to it by using the URL below:

Follow the directions on the Upload File page regarding naming your image files. To help you navigate and find the image file on your computer that you intend on uploading, use the Browse button. Find the file (it should be a JPEG image file, with .JPG file extension) and then click the Upload button. Try to keep the image file size below 100 KB (kilobytes) using 72 dpi (dots per inch) resolution, thus ensuring that the image is not so large dimensionally that people will have to scroll the image to see it onscreen.

After the file has been transferred from your computer to the ibiblio server, the Upload File page is "refreshed" and you will be given the location URL for it. You will probably need to scroll to the bottom of the page to notice this. Take note of the file path and image name displayed at the bottom. The path will always be http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/ with the name of your image file on the end. For example if you named your file Geissorhiza_inflexa.jpg it would be:

If your file is larger than the permitted limit, your file will not be uploaded. Check the size of your file and be sure the name of your file is in the box before you click on Upload.

You will need to add the URL for your photograph to one of the PBS Wiki Pages. There are pages for Mystery Bulbs, Diseases, and for many bulb genera. If you have a photograph for the Photographs and Information page for a genus not yet listed on that page, a new wiki page for that genus will need to be added to the Photographs and Information page first. How to do that will be answered later.

Go to the Photographs and Information page, then go to the specific genus page that corresponds to the image you just uploaded. Select the Edit button at the bottom left corner of the page, to enter "edit mode" for that page. Insert your text contribution, arranging it alphabetically by species name. Please credit the person who took the photograph and briefly tell us the identity of the plant, country of origin, whether photographed in the wild or garden, and other brief information that might assist someone interested in growing the plant.

Below the text information you add, on a separate line add the URL for the photograph you uploaded. Be sure to put a triple % percentage sign IN FRONT OF THE URL (see example below). This is special notation that forces subsequent text to start on a new line. For editing tips see the bottom of the wiki page. There is more detailed information on editing wiki pages, with examples that you can view in "edit mode", on the Editing Tips page.

If you own a Mac you may not have a file extension included in the name of your picture. You will need to add the .jpg file extension (be sure you put a dot in between your title and jpg) in order for the wiki to know what it is. Only image files in the JPEG file format (.JPG file extension) are to be uploaded. Be sure not to add additional characters or even blank spaces after the .jpg file extension, otherwise the image link will not work.

Please contact the pbs wiki administrators, Mary Sue Ittner (msittner at mcn.org) or Mark McDonough (antennaria at aol.com) or Mark Wilcox (marque219 at yahoo.com) and alert them about your file so they can remove it for you. Please note: so that web addresses don't become "harvested" by spammers and "web bots", the addresses above have been figuratively expanded. When replying to a wiki administrator, replace the " at " portion with the single @ character.

To add a new page to the wiki, you will first need to name your new page while in "edit mode" on some existing wiki page. When adding text on a wiki page in "edit mode", type in the name of your new wiki page by using syntax the wiki understands as instructions to create a new page. There are two ways to do this:

1. If the new page name is just ONE WORD, you must enclose the title of your new page within square brackets. For example, for a new page called Nerine, the following would be appropriate: [Nerine]

2. If the new page name contains MORE THAN ONE WORD separated by spaces, then there are two ways to create the page. One method is to enclose the words in square brackets, exactly as done in method #1 above. The second option is to remove the spaces between the words and string them together, capitalizing the first letter of each word such as StringThemTogetherLikeThis. This is automatically recognized by the wiki as a new page name if the page doesn't already exist. In both examples, if the page already exists, the words are simply converted to the actual wiki link to that page.

*Recommendation: If your page name has multiple words, It's best to use the "string the words together" method. The reason for this preference is that blank spaces in urls and links on a wiki page are interpreted and replaced with percentage-mark-20, or "%20" in the URL, since unix (the wiki operating system) does not recognize spaces in links. This can make the resulting URL hard to read.

Example: [This is a wiki page] will look like this in a url: This%20is%20a%20wiki%20page

After you have decided on your title for the new page and added it on the page you want to link it to, save the page. Additional instructions are found below, when the page includes a table (as used on the Photographs and Information page), but that’s a special condition only used on the Photographs and Information page thus far. If the new wiki page does not exist yet, a question mark appears before the first word of the proposed wiki page. Click on the question mark and you are transported to your new empty wiki page, ready for you to edit the page. Replace the words Describe [NewPage] with text describing the new page. Save your work.

If someone has added a link to a wiki page and misspelled it, the wiki will think that a new page is being made and will invite you to create it by adding the question mark. If you have strung two words together or added something in brackets without realizing it, this will also happen. Looking at the page by editing it may help you figure out what has happened.

*Alert: Please be aware of how the wiki interprets words with more than one capitalized letter in the word. If the wiki encounters a name with more than one capitalized letter, such as in the name McGary, the wiki thinks this is a new page and will try to create it if a page by that name does not yet exist. If a page by that name does exist, the word becomes a link to that page. You can get around this by spelling the name Mc Gary, putting a space between the syllables or words, even if it is not normally spelled this way. Alternately you could spell the name Mcgary. If you create a wiki page in error, please contact one of the wiki administrators for assistance.

If you have not yet added it to a page you can go to the list of files: http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files

Look for your file alphabetically by the name you gave it. Since files on the wiki are case sensitive, files that are capitalized will appear before those that are not. That is why we ask that the JPG image file names always begin with the genus name with the first letter capitalized, exactly as botanical names are written. Eg: Geissorhiza_inflexa.jpg where the first character was capitalized. If you are not sure what you named your uploaded image, you may be able to find it by sorting the files list by date you uploaded it. If you named your image with syntax that varies from the few general guidelines and rules of image file naming, it may have been renamed by the wiki administrators.

As a yearly wiki file management exercise, to deal with the large volume of images found in the Files folder, image files for sizeable genera will be moved into subfolders named after specific Genera. Subsequently the wiki administrators edit affected PBS wiki pages when moving the images, updating the URLs accordingly. It is our belief that this will help you to more easily locate new files uploaded to the PBS wiki, by only needing to look through a limited number of recent image names, rather than a list exceeding a thousand or more names.

Click on the Edit button for the page you wish to add the link to. Describe it, then type in the URL on a separate line preceded by three % symbols. Click on the URL in preview mode to make sure the link works, then save. Alternatively (and this often looks more pleasing) you can enclose in brackets a name for the link followed by the pipe symbol and the link.

Eg. [Home Page| http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/HomePage]

We would very much like everyone who contributes information or text to the PBS wiki to create a page with personal identifying information. By adding a page telling PBS members about yourself, your climate, and your camera, you will not have to include this information each time you add a photograph. On our home page, a Contributors link to that page is available. Click on that link and edit the page to add your name alphabetically. Add brackets around your name or type it together as instructed above to add a new page. After you have saved this action there will be a ? in front of your name. Click on it and replace Describe YourName with anything you want to write about yourself for your own page. Save your work. After you have made a wiki page for yourself, each time you type your name be sure you type it in the way you first created your page, i.e. [Your Name] or YourName. That will link your PBS wiki additions, to your Contributors page. If you click on your page, you will be able to see everything that is linked to it by clicking on BACK LINKS on the very top of the page.

Some wiki contributors have made a wiki page for themselves (as Contributors) and some have not. If you have made a page for yourself, and are linking your photographs to your Contributors page by entering your name as photographer (by enclosing your name within brackets or by stringing your first-name-last-name together), when you save your edits to a wiki page, your name will appear as a blue-color link. If you can't remember which method you first used to create your Contributors page, you can just guess, and when you save it, if you guessed right, it will become blue, and if you have guessed wrong, your name will have a question mark in front of it. Contact a PBS wiki administrator if you can’t figure it out.

Send your questions to one of the wiki administrators and he or she will try to help you. Mary Sue Ittner (msittner at mcn.org) or Mark McDonough (antennaria at aol.com) or Mark Wilcox (marque219 at yahoo.com) . Please note: so that web addresses don't become "harvested" by spammers and "web bots", the addresses above have been figuratively expanded. When replying to a wiki administrator, replace the " at " portion with the single @ character.