Help talk:Notebook

Possible tweaks to instructions

Steve Koch 00:05, 12 April 2008 (EDT):I am not sure whether this would be good to change the help page, but below are my suggested tweaks that would have helped my understanding (for lack of a better method, I'll color my changes red):

• To set up your lab notebook you'll first need to create a few pages, cut and paste some starting wiki code and put them in the right places. As soon as they are set up, you'll be a click away from creating new lab notebook entries.
• The required pages are:
  1. The Notebook page (You should create the page as [[User:Your UserName/Notebook]]. This page does not require a template. On your new lab notebook page, add a link to a new page by add the wiki code, [[/Test Project]])
  2. The Project page (This is the "Test Project" page you created a link to on your main notebook page. Cut and paste all of the wiki code from one of the following templates ((NOTE: Here is where I think it would be simpler to have them add a substitution template instead)Standard or iGEM template)
  3. The Entry Base page (Click on the "customize your entry pages" link to create the "entry base page". On this new page, cut and paste all of the wiki code from one of the following templates Standard or iGEM template)

Is it simpler to have users use a substitution template instead of "edit"+"cut and paste?"

E.g., have them add code like this:

     {{subst:Project Base}}
or
             {{subst:Entry Base}}

--Steve Koch 23:59, 11 April 2008 (EDT)

• Steve Koch 00:17, 12 April 2008 (EDT):I tried this using the Template:Project Base and Template:Entry Base pages I created and it seemed to work. My opinion is that it's easier to explain how to setup things. (Because you can just say, cut and paste the following:

  {{subst:Project Page}}

• Ricardo Vidal 00:20, 14 April 2008 (EDT): This would make it much easier but there is the matter of keeping things open to editing of the templates and such. If we use "universal" templates, any changes a user makes would change all the notebooks. Also, individual templates per user beats the purpose.
  
  We are almost about to roll out our "one-click" autocreate notebook that will make this all so much simpler :)

• • Steve Koch 01:09, 14 April 2008 (EDT):Yeah, one-click will be great. Just a detail, though: when you use "subst:" in the template (as above), it loads the entire text of the template upon saving (as opposed to each time page is loaded)--and so the editing the template will not change all the notebooks previously created.
    • Ricardo Vidal 01:12, 14 April 2008 (EDT): Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't notice the "subst:" in there. My bad. That sounds like a great idea. I'll look into that tomorrow and maybe we can get some new easier tutorials ready :). Thanks for the great feedback!

Addition of example and screencast help a lot!

Steve Koch 23:51, 11 April 2008 (EDT):Jason and Ricardo -- the addition of the link to example notebook along with the screencast are a big help. I was able to set up my notebook, and while doing so, everything "clicked" and made sense finally. Thanks!

• Jason R. Kelly 00:44, 12 April 2008 (EDT): Cool, thanks for the great comments above.