Quickstart Guide

OpenEI Quick-Start Guide

Creating and Editing OpenEI Pages

Core content policies

Before you begin creating or editing pages, please review the OpenEI core content policies. In brief, OpenEI content should meet the following guidelines:

Neutral Point of View: Content added must give a neutral, unbiased viewpoint.
Verifiability: Content must give attribution back to its source.
No Original Research: OpenEI is not for displaying original research. All content should exist somewhere else on the Internet and be verifiable.

Creating an account

To create or edit pages, you must have a OpenEI account. Click 'Sign Up' in the upper right corner of any page or go directly to Signup page. OpenEI accounts are free. If you already have an account, log in using the fields in the upper right corner.

Creating and editing pages

Help:Add a Tool or Program. To edit a page, click the 'Edit' or 'Edit with Form' tab on the page you want to edit.

Spanish-language page tracking

We do not yet have a Spanish-language version of OpenEI. To track Spanish-language pages, we ask that you insert the text [[Category:En Español]] at the bottom of each Spanish-language page you create.

Help

OpenEI's Help page, which is linked in the menu at the top of the page) contains a wealth of information about creating and editing OpenEI content. The videos under 'Tutorials' are especially helpful for new users. It is also valuable to simply look at the syntax of existing pages (under the 'Edit' tab) and copy it for your purposes where applicable.

Developer Tips

OpenEI Developers have summarized their own tips and tricks for development content here. The page also lists the most popular data types created in OpenEI.

Monitoring OpenEI Pages

Monitoring new pages and page changes

To monitor new content coming into OpenEI:

Go to the Main Page
Click ‘View’ in the menu at the top of the page
Select ‘New Pages’ or ‘Recent Changes’ from the drop-down menu
‘New Pages’ shows pages by the date they were created
‘Recent Changes’ shows existing pages that have been edited recently

Managing a Wiki Watchlist

All pages on OpenEI can be ‘watched’ by users, i.e., you can track any changes made to pages that you specify. When you are signed into OpenEI, click the ‘Watch’ tab to add the page to your ‘Watchlist,’ which can be found on your ‘User Page.’ Log in to OpenEI, click 'User Pages' (in the upper right corner), and select ‘My watchlist’ from the drop-down menu.

Participating in the OpenEI Community

Follow OpenEI on social media for community participation, communication, and news about site development.

Facebook For tracking OpenEI developments. If you are not currently a Facebook member, join at www.facebook.com. Once you’ve joined, go to the OpenEI page and become a ‘fan’ to receive updates and track OpenEI news.

Twitter For tracking OpenEI developments. Once you're a member of Twitter, go to the OpenEnergyInfo Twitter site and click ‘follow’ to receive OpenEI updates.

YouTube For accessing all OpenEI videos, including tutorials. Once you are a YouTube member, ‘subscribe’ to the OpenEI channel to be alerted when new videos are posted.