A workspace is a collection of pages and files.  In the upgraded Classroom Edition of PBworks, you can apply special page security and folder security to limit the access that your users have to content within the workspace.  In the free educational edition of PBworks, all users in the users list have equal access to pages and files, through the Pages and Files manager.

Click the links to the left to learn how pages are created and edited in the PBworks system.

Rules for page names

There are a limited number of rules which apply to page names in the PBworks system.  If you attempt to create a page that violates any of these rules, the system will alert with an error:

1. The following characters cannot be used in any page name.  While we attempt to make the system as flexible as possible, the name of the page is reflected in the URL, and in a URL context these symbols have different meanings.
   
   

   .	period	?	question mark
   [	begin bracket	&	ampersand
   ]	end bracket	|	vertical bar
   +	plus	#	number sign
   %	percent symbol	/	forward slash
   \	backslash

    

2. The page named "SideBar" in your wiki cannot be deleted or renamed.  The content of the "SideBar" page is displayed in the "SideBar" module of the page display.  Free educational workspaces all have a SideBar module that cannot be removed, Classroom Edition spaces have a Customization setting that allows users to remove that page from the right panel.
   
   
3. Page name uniqueness:  All page names inside one workspace must be unique, regardless of the folder they happen to reside in.  This limitation is actually beneficial when working with a large number of people, as you can be assured that a page with a specific name is the most current version for everyone involved in the workspace.

What's the number in the URL?

The number which appears between "/w/page/" and the name of the page is a unique ID, that is attached to the page itself.  Even if the page is renamed or moved to a different folder, this ID remains the same.  This allows links to the page to work, even if the page is renamed.  For example, if a link included this ID and lead to this page, and then the page was renamed from "Something Else" to "Home", the link would still take users to the correct page.

/w/page/23660311/Something%20Else

When this happens, the redirect is noted in the upper right corner of the page:

Splitting content

If you see an error like this while editing a page, then that means your page is slightly oversized and your ability to edit the page on many browsers will be compromised.  While there is no hard limit to the length of a page, the editing and viewing experience will be hampered by oversized pages.

There are no automatic methods or tools available to split the content of a page, but you can easily do this manually by creating two new pages and opening them up in edit mode in two additional browser tabs.   Then, use your computer's copy and paste shortcut keys to copy partial content from one page and paste it into the other.  Then, you can remove the original oversized page, or apply page security to keep it hidden from the majority of your users, to encourage use of the two smaller pages.