http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=9953

This document is obsolete, and is maintained here only for archeological interest. Please read the current PerlMonks FAQ!

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Linking to other nodes

Linking offsite

Submitting Code and Escaping Characters

Chatterbox Information

Finding Information on CPAN

Voting on writeups

How post moderation works

Where do I post X?

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Linking to other nodes

(See What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information? for more up-to-date information.)

The first basic procedure you will want to be familiar with is linking. You can link to a page by putting its title in []'s.

For example:

[The Monastery Gates] results in a link that looks like The Monastery Gates.

If you want the text displayed on the link to be different from the actual title of the node. You need to make a link that is of the form [nodetitle|linktitle]

[The Monastery Gates|Entering the Monastery] results in a link that looks like Entering the Monastery and points to "The Monastery Gates" node

Linking to a specific node by node_id: Now you can link to a specific node_id by using [id://979] which will make a link like vroom. You can also follow it up with link text that you want to use in place of the node title like so [id://131|The Default Page] whic creates a link like so: The Default Page.

Linking offsite

(See What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information? for more up-to-date information.)

Just use regular HTML ie...

<A HREF=http://mypage.org>my site is here</A>

Submitting Code and Escaping Characters

You can insert a piece of code into any writeup by simply surrounding it with "code tags" ie.

<CODE> print "your code here\n"; </CODE>

This wraps your text within <PRE> tags and replaces all the necessary characters so your <> aren't interpreted as HTML tags. You can also use regular HTML tags to make your text look nice. If you use PRE tags please keep your lines of text relatively short so the site can be viewed without unnecessary horizontal scrolling.

Now you're probably asking How do I escape all of those pesky special characters?
Well as things stand now you need to HTML escape those characters.

The main characters you're likely to want to use are:

&lt;	<
&gt;	>
&#091;	[
&#093;	]

Chatterbox Information

The chatterbox allows you to chat or message with other users. If you're logged in you'll see a textarea with a talk button next to it. Type in your message click talk and it'll be sent off so all the users who are currently logged in and have their chatterbox turned oncan see what you have to say.

There is a also an option to message specific users. Just type /msg or /tell --space-- (username) ((if the user has a space in their name you must use an _underscore_)) --space-- whatever you want to say. The message will appear in that user's chatterbox immediately and will stay until they "check" the box next to it and click "talk".

/me --space-- action italicizes the text of the message/action.

You can also choose to to turn this nodelet on or off in user settings

To link to specific nodes you can put the node name inside of square brackets. Ex) check out [vroom]'s home node.

Finding Information on CPAN

Sadly we don't have all the information on all the modules available here. However CPAN probably has most of them. If you search for something like Stuff::Blah you should find a link on the not found page that looks like CPAN Stuff::Blah which should do a cpan module search directly once you click thru that link. The search results and not found page should have text boxes to perform a CPAN search in.

Voting on Writeups

If you're a logged in user and you have enough XP points to obtain votes you are allotted a certain number of votes each day. You can then use these votes to affect the reputation of given nodes as well as the experience of the user who authored that node. If you're not sure whether you have enought XP points to do this check your home node and the Voting/Experience System for everything you want to know about this system.

How post moderation works

Currently I (vroom) and a few other high level users moderate posts. If your post doesn't show up right away it's probably because a moderator has not approved it yet. However your nodes will appear in Newest Nodes. Also if you're logged in and go to your user settings you can select show unmoderated. With that option turned on you will be able to view all posts within the sections. (SOPW,Craft etc.) This will not make things show up on the frontpage since we hope to guarantee quality there. At that point we either allow them to appear to the frontpage or the frontpage and section page.

Where should I post X?

• Seekers of Perl Wisdom-When you need an answer to an actual real life problem fast you're probably going to want to post your question here.
• Categorized Questions and Answers-These are more general questions. If you post a question to Seekers of Perl Wisdom but think other people might benefit from the knowledge you might want to rephrase it in more general terms for this section. This is also a good place to look for answers before you post to Seekers of Perl Wisdom
• Craft was our first place to show off code of any kind. It was meant to be a showcase for code users were proud of. It was also originally the only place on the site that formatted code properly. It soon became apparent people would like to post code all over the site so we came up with the <CODE>print "your code here";</CODE> representation. So this section provides a prominent but somewhat temporary place to display your code.
• Code Catacombs-I define the code that goes here as "longer" code or standalone code. The code that goes here has a specific purpose and gets a specific job done. I consider stuff here to be more application level.
• Snippets Section-These are little pieces of code that could be used in a variety of places. They may not be extremely useful in and of themselves but they could be used in lots of different places, and types of applications. This could be a killer regex or a function that converts a to b.
• Meditations-Have you had an epiphany about programming in general of Perl.... share it with the rest of us here.
• Perl Poetry-You've seen it in the back of Programming Perl and TPJ now try your own hand.... who said coding couldn't be artistic at the same time.
• Obfuscated Code-If you've got some code that does something that wouldn't be immediately apparent to merlyn you might be on the right track. Make your code as compact as possible, get rid of that needless whitespace, make things as confusing as possible and amaze the masses.
• Perl Monks Discussion-This is where users can discuss features they might like to see. Why the XP system kicks/sucks etc.... this is the place for site related issues.... not Perl problems.