Migrating to WikiTide

Welcome to WikiTide, we're happy to see you here.

Migrating a wiki to WikiTide is simple. It doesn't matter where the wiki is hosted. If you have a database dump of the wiki, moving your wiki should be easy.

Exporting a wiki
The first step to moving your wiki to WikiTide is to generate a XML dump (also called a database dump) of your wiki. It will contain all the pages and their revisions. They'll include the description of files, but not the files themselves. The way you'll do this will depend on your wiki.

Moving from Fandom
Fandom provides a database dump of your wiki at in your wiki. The dump isn't generated every day so it may be outdated. If it is, a wiki administrator can press the "Request an update" button. If the wiki has no active administrators, you'll have to ask Fandom Staff to update it for you. Once you've downloaded the dump, go to the "Importing a wiki" section.

Fandom doesn't allow you to close your wiki except in some circumstances like small wikis, mass deletion of pages, or linking to external wikis on the main page. They only allow linking to a public post on the main page. After 2 weeks, it should be removed.

Images
Fandom's Terms of Services disallow the automatic downloading of images, but downloading them manually is still allowed. WikiTide volunteers won't help you out with manually downloading them. The images aren't provided in the XML dumps. You may have more rights due to the GDPR Article 20 of the EU for the wikis that you uploaded, due to it being associated with your account.

Moving from WikiDot
As WikiDot doesn't run on MediaWiki and instead uses their own software, it will be a bit harder to import from here.

You can use some scripts to convert WikiDot backups to MediaWiki dumps. One of the most popular options is this one. It uses Python 2.9 and it uses a shell script so it may be harder to use for people who aren't into computing that much.

Moving from Miraheze
Miraheze provides a place where you can generate data dumps at. The page can be found in the sidebar as "Manage/Download this wiki's dump". Only bureaucrats or users with the ManageWiki permission can see and access this page.

If there are no active administrators, you can do a local election in the wiki and request rights in the steward noticeboard in Miraheze. After going to this page, keep the format as "xml" and change the namespace to the namespace of the pages you want to move to the new wiki. Choose "all" if you want every page to be moved to the new wiki. Then click "Submit" to request a dump.

After requesting a dump, wait until your request passes the queue, and then download it. After downloading it, go to the "Importing a wiki" section.

Maintenance Scripts
If you have access to the server, and if you're moving the entire wiki, the easiest way will be to run a maintenance script to export your wiki. For more information about this, check the dumpBackup.php documentation on MediaWiki.org. After getting a database dump, go to "Importing a wiki".

Exporting images
If you have access to the server, you can use the dumpImages.php script to generate an image backup. After, go to "Importing a wiki".

MediaWiki Scraper
You can generate a database dump and file dump of any public MediaWiki wiki (e.g any wiki on Fandom, Miraheze or WikiTide) using the MediaWiki Client Tools' MediaWiki Scraper Python 3 dumpgenerator script, (full instructions are at that link).

Example usage
The result will include an XML dump with full page history, a dump of all images and files along with associated descriptions and a siteinfo.json file containing information about features, such as the installed extensions and skins.

Manually exporting
You can manually export a wiki using Special:Export. The page is self-explanatory, but you'll have to uncheck "Include only the current revision, not the full history" since most licences like the Creative Commons license require attribution. Failing to do this will cause you to be in legal trouble. This is only good for exporting small wikis or a small amount of pages, but not for larger wikis as it gets more tedious to use. This is recommended for importing from Miraheze and others.

Caveats

 * Other than the maintenance scripts and the MediaWiki Scraper method, none of the methods export files. Image files need you to make a Phorge task to contact an administrator to import them.

* None of these tools will move user accounts

* Any data transferred must have proper copyright, and you need to have ownership or a license that lets you host the content at WikiTide like Creative Commons. If you want to change the license from CC-SA to another license, please note it in your upload request.

Importing a wiki
There are a few ways to import a database dump. You should generally have us import it for you as MediaWiki will error if the dump is more than a few kilobytes large. If your import is small enough, you can do it yourself without contacting us.

Do it yourself
If your dump is very small (less than a few kilobytes), you can use import your dump using Special:Import. Images can't be imported using that page. If the dump is small enough, the dump should complete and you should be able to use your wiki.

If the import fails, please read the below section.

If you decide to do it yourself, you'll have to manually upload the files. You can either use the normal upload interface or use MsUpload to drag and drop groups of files through the page editor.

Have us do it
XML (Content) Imports: If your dump is large enough that MediaWiki will most likely fail to process it in an appropriate amount of time (more than a few kilobytes), you'll have to contact a system administrator to import it for you. To request that we import the dump for you, you'll have to use Special:RequestImportDump  and fill the form.

For image imports, you'll have to use Phorge (needs a WikiForge account). You can send your images in a few ways:

* On the Phorge page, you can send a link to wherever the files are stored

* If it's small enough, you can upload it directly to Phorge

While you wait for the import to be done, you should avoid making new pages with the same name as pages in your old wiki. It will cause a conflict and the imported page won't override the new one. You'll have to go to the history tab to get an older revision of the page.

While the import is in progress, any editing (including account creation) is temporarily disabled. People who want to make an account must make an account in the WikiTide Meta wiki first then use the username and password to login to your wiki when the import is complete.