The TechCenter Wiki reflects the technical knowledge shared by those using Dell Enterprise Solutions - while Dell staff certainly are participants, the information, questions, and experiences of our visitors and contributors are key to the wiki's success. Please encourage conversation, knowledge sharing, comments and writing space to others in the community on any page you create.

The scope of the wiki is Dell Enterprise Solutions, including Dell Partners. Occasionally there will be comments and questions on Dell products outside this scope. Please try to route these requests to the appropriate area, or place on Dell.com where they will find help. Most of the time there is a forum on The Dell Community Forums that will be appropriate.

Site Organization and Management

Roles

• Visitors - Can view all pages.
• Registered Users - Can view all pages and add comments.
• Writers - Can create new content, edit existing content, comment and view all pages.
• Moderators - Can manage pages, manage comment threads, manage users, create content and edit content, comment and view all pages.
• Administrators - Same as moderators with the added ability to view reports and adjust global site settings.

Information Architecture

High level topic pages are intended to cover the main topics, with additional pages added as needed. There will be some things that belong in several categories that should be cross linked as necessary. So when you find something on the site that could also fit in another category - add a link.
Each topic area can be filled out with subpages as needed, but here is a list of common areas: Whitepapers, Blog, FAQ, Related Links, How To, Experiences and Best Practices

Managing Your Pages

High level topic pages will be linked on the TechCenter homepage by an admin. The management and location of sub pages should be as similar to other sections as possible for consistency, but can be different if it makes sense for that specific topic

Whitepapers

Each major section should have a whitepaper section in chronological order. This page then needs to link to the main whitepaper page at the top level.

The Page

Style, Formatting and Headers

Please observe the format of the existing pages and follow the structure as closely as possible. In order to get the "Blue Bar" heading in the pages, simply select the text and then change the format from Normal to Heading in the Easy Edit Toolbar, as shown below.

Content

The majority of users to the site are interested in technical content. Be as precise as possible in your writing and observations. If something needs to be corrected on a page and you know it to be a fact, please change it. The content should be as accurate and measured as possible.

Links

Link to existing content instead of recreating the content on these pages. If the information is already available, simply link to it, no need to copy and paste huge amounts of text. This site also allows attachments, please try to limit the use of attachments since there is a global limit on the amount of attachments, and you cannot place them in an exact place on the page. They will always show at the bottom. If a PDF file is hosted elsewhere, simply link to it instead of trying to attach it to a page.

Remember, links are self explanatory. No need to point out that it is a link, or to say "Information about XZY can be found here." Simply create the link directly on the text that is relevant.

If you ever "lose" the color to a link on the page, you can highlight the link, select a custom font color and use "0066cc" as the color code.

Widgets

Most of the widgets provided are self-explanatory. However, there is an "other widget". This allows you to place an IFRAME tag on your page. This will embedded a web page from any other site on the page of this site. The format of the IFRAME tag is :

<iframe src =http://www.webpage.com/whatever.html>

</iframe>

Here is an example using the "other widget" with Google.

Comments

Remember that comments are seen by everyone. Be friendly, factual, and fair.

Posting Code

When posting code examples or scripts the font used should be Courier and should not be too long, example below. Any code that is very lengthy should be linked to as a separate file.

class HelloWorld {

public static void main {String args[]} {

for (;;) {
System.out.print("Hello World !");
}

}

}

The EasyEdit interface is not a true WYSIWYG editor. For example, I had to use the indent functions to get the proper spacing for the code sample above.

Writing Style and Persona

The TechCenter wiki is meant to be a friendly community and as such should be populated with friendly, easily digestible, information and comments. Certain areas are clearly more casual than others - for example the blogs and comments sections - where other would be more informational - best practices and FAQs.

Create your sections and contributions with the thought of, "How will this encourage others to contribute their knowledge ?"

Legals

This site is governed by Dell's Online Policies. Please read Dell's Online Policies for further information on matters of Privacy, Site Terms, Copyright information, and other concerns .

Spreading The Word

We encourage you to link to this wiki from other sites. If you have something of value to add to the site, please DO, this wiki will only be as good as the contributors. Feel free to do as much as you can.
"Try not. Do or do not, there is no try...." - Yoda

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Where can I experiment before editing a real page ?
A: The Sandbox.

Q: How can I delete a page ?
A: Writers can not delete pages.