Help:Moving pages

You can rename a page by moving it. There are several reasons why you might wish to rename a page:


 * the title has been misspelled.
 * the title does not follow the wiki's naming conventions
 * the scope of the article has been reduced, extended or otherwise changed.





How do I move/rename a page?
To move a page:
 * 1) log in
 * 2) go to the page you want to move
 * 3) click the move link at the top of the article
 * 4) type the new name for the page
 * 5) choose whether you also want to move the page's talk page (usually you will)
 * 6) click the "move page" button and the page will be renamed to the new title

The old title will become a redirect page, so any links to the old title will still go to the new page.

Sometimes page moves can cause double redirects; the MediaWiki software does not resolve these so they end up being dead ends for your reader. After a successful move, you will be given a link to "What links here" to allow you to check for double redirects -- these will be doubly indented on the bulleted list provided. They can be fixed by changing an old redirect page which points to a newer redirect page to point to the moved page instead.

You can also check the Special:DoubleRedirects page for a complete list of potential problem pages within the wiki.



Why should I move/rename a page, instead of creating a new one?
The "move page" function keeps the page history of the article, before and after the move, in one place, so that all contributors receive credit as required by the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License used at Wikia. Cutting text out of one page and pasting it into a new one causes these acknowledgements to be lost.



Why can't I move a certain page?
If a page already exists at a new title, an admin will need to delete that page before you can move something else there.

The only exception is when the target page was created as a redirect, and has no other edits in its page history. In this case you can move the page in the normal way, overwriting the redirect.



How do I undo a page move?
When a page is moved, an undo link will appear beside it in recent changes, allowing the change to be reverted.

Multiple moves can be reverted, as long as you do them in reverse chronological order. For example, if Sandbox is moved to sandbox and then to test, you should click the undo link for the second move (sandbox->test) before clicking the first one (wikia:sandbox->sandbox). By doing the reversals in this order, the redirects are pointing to the right place, no administrator access is required since pages can be moved over redirects when they point to the page being moved. This feature is no different from moving the pages manually, but makes the process quicker since the move confirmation page will be shown with the correct page titles already filled in.



Is there a record of page moves?
Page moves are recorded at Special:Log/move, and will also be displayed in the page histories. Revert links are available from the log for admins.