Migrating to WikiForge
Help center
FAQ
Migrating to WikiForge
Custom domains
Support
WikiForge has established a set of simple-to-follow procedures for migrating wikis previously self-hosted or hosted on other MediaWiki hosts such as Fandom, Miraheze, and WikiForge. After successfully requesting a wiki, you can follow the steps below to migrate your data to WikiForge.
Generate database dumps of your wiki
Text-based content pages can be exported all at once into an XML file, which can be later imported into your WikiForge wiki. This XML dump file will contain all text-based pages in all namespaces, including templates, user pages, media descriptions and other content model pages provided by extensions (most notably Lua module pages provided by Scribunto and CSS template subpages provided by TemplateStyles), but does not include media files nor configurations. Separate media dumps may be available if you have shell access to the wiki's server, or if your wiki is originally hosted by specific hosts. Please note that WikiForge cannot assist you in requesting, generating dumps or running bot scripts on other sites.
User data cannot be migrated through any of these methods; users will have to recreate their account on WikiForge.
Migrating from Fandom
The XML dump of your Fandom wiki can be found at the bottom of the wiki's Special:Statistics page. You will need to provide us the "Current pages and history" dump, as editing history is required to fulfil the CC BY-SA free-use license adopted by Fandom.
While Fandom generates a backup dump weekly, the XML dump available on the page does not appear to be automatically updated. If the dumps appear to be outdated or "unknown", wiki administrators can request an updated dump with the "request an update" button. For wikis without active administrators, create a support ticket through Fandom's support system and request that an updated dump be generated.
Aa for media files, Fandom does not provide an interface for downloading all images. Fandom's Terms of Use disallows users from using robot scripts to scrape content from their wikis. You may reach out to Fandom support and request an image dump for backup, or manually download every media file.
Note: Fandom has strict policies to prevent the exodus of communities and users from their platform. Migration to other platforms are seen as project forking. This is governed by their Forking Policy, disallowing wiki closure (with very few exceptions for small personal wikis), mass content deletion or linking to "forked" projects on the wiki's main page. Communities are allowed to hoist a link on the wiki's main page only for two weeks to a community post announcing the "forking", where a link to the "forked" project can be hoisted. Administrator rights of departing users will be forcibly removed by staff due to "conflict of interest".
Migrating from Miraheze and WikiTide
Both Miraheze and WikiTide have DataDump pre-installed on all wikis, allowing wiki administrators to generate an XML dump by themselves via the Special:DataDump special page. The special page also allows exporting a dump containing the wiki configurations made in ManageWiki.
Users can make a "Miscellaneous" request on Miraheze's Steward noticeboard for the media dump (which will be added to the DataDump interface), or for members of communities where all administrators are inactive.
Migrating from self-hosted wikis
Exporting using maintenance scripts
You can use maintenance scripts provided by MediaWiki to generate database dumps. dumpBackup.php and dumpUploads.php generate the XML and Media dumps respectively.
Exporting using on-wiki interface
You can also attain an XML dump manually via the Special:Export interface. This is generally useful for wikis with a smaller amount of pages. The "Include only the current revision, not the full history" option must be unchecked, as editing history is required to fulfil the attribution requirements of most free-use copyright licenses.
You may also try import directly from another wiki, but this involves importing the pages one by one and may be very tedious to do for large wikis.
Exporting using third-party tools
If you cannot get maintenance scripts to work for you, there are third-party tools like the MediaWiki Scraper, which helps generate an XML dump and download media altogether.
Importing on WikiForge
With your database dumps ready, you can start moving into WikiForge.
Before you start importing
TL;DR: Enable all required extensions before importing or else things might break.
Here's a checklist of things to verify before you begin any import:
- Enable extensions you previously had on your original wiki and add content models (such as TemplateStyles). You can find the list of extensions that fall into this category at mw:Category:ContentHandler extensions. Skipping this could render your wiki inaccessible, and/or with very broken mechanics.
- Create custom namespaces you previously had on your original wiki. If some namespaces were created by extensions like Translate, CommentStreams, Semantic MediaWiki or others, enable them. Pages imported with their namespace missing will have a pseudo-namespace, of which pages become inaccessible if the related namespaces are created after the pages are imported. While pseudo-namespace pages can be recovered using a database query that can be done by system administrators, you are still strongly suggested to take caution and prepare everything first, so things can work properly once they are imported.
- Importing from Miraheze? We can copy over the majority of your settings and extensions/skins. To do this, request an import for your ManageWiki configuration dump first (see below for instructions).
Importing XML database dumps
You will have to unzip your XML database dumps before uploading onto on-wiki interfaces.
- If your dump is very small, you can import it on your wiki's Special:Import page.
- If your dump is over 2MB or the Import interface failed, you should upload your dump to Special:RequestImportDump here on WikiForge Meta.
- If your dump is very large or the RequestImportDump interface failed, you should create a task on Phorge requesting an import.
Please note that you should not create pages that exist on your origin wiki previously, as imported revisions are older than the new revisions you create and will be overridden. If this happens, you have to manually restore the imported revisions through the history tab.
Importing media and ManageWiki dumps
As of current, there is no on-wiki interface for requesting the import of media and ManageWiki dumps. You should create a task on create a task at the Support Desk to request importing these.
Requesting on the Support Desk
When creating a task at the WikiForge Support Desk requesting for a dump import, please include the following information:
- A clear title consisting of what you are requesting to be done, e.g. XML import for databasename.
- In the task description:
- The database name of your wiki, e.g. abcwikitide for abc.wikiforge.net.
- An URL of the source wiki, e.g. https://abc.wikifarm.org/wiki/.
- The dump file. If your dump file is not very large (under 20MB), you can upload it directly to Phorge; if it is larger than 20MB, you are suggested to upload it to a Cloud file sharing service (e.g. Google Drive) and provide a view link.
- For ManageWiki dumps: a link to the original ManageWiki dump, e.g. https://static.miraheze.org/***wiki/dumps/***wiki_managewiki_backup_******.json. Your ManageWiki dump must be identical to the original dump, with the exception of replacing Miraheze static links with WikiForge ones.
- The reason for importing, in this case migrating wikis. Please also mention that you have tried RequestImportDump but failed.