User blog:KuroUrufu/Guide to Get and Use AutoWikiBrowser

AutoWikiBrowser
The easiest bot software to install, set and use is AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) - so let's see how to.

Download the program
Download AutoWikiBrowser to your computer. When the download is done, launch AutoWikiBrowser and you are ready to begin.

To use AWB, you'll have to follow these steps:
 * 1) Choose the wiki where you are going to use the bot.
 * 2) Log in to the bot account.
 * 3) Secify what pages the bot should edit and what the bot should do.

Choose the wiki
Choose the wiki where you are going to use the bot:
 * 1) Go to Options → Preferences → Site.
 * 2) From the drop-down list, choose " " as your project.
 * 3) * Note that you could also choose " " from the drop-down list and then type the first part of the URL of your community (for example, " " should be entered for the " " community) but this works only for English wikis.
 * 4) Select "https://" instead of "http://".
 * 5) * Note that, even if the HTTP/HTTPS drop-down is set to HTTP, it will correct itself to HTTPS after the next step but this auto-correction could not work with some versions of the software..
 * 6) Enter the domain name of the wiki (for example  ) you want into the text field (n.b. don't include "https://" since you specified that above/before).
 * 7) When you are done, save changes with the "OK" button.

Your program may freeze for a few moments. After this, at the right on the bottom bar, you will see that the program is synchronized with the given community.

Log in
Once you have chosen a wiki, you must log into your bot account.
 * 1) Go to File → Log in/Profiles....
 * 2) Enter the bot's username and password.
 * 3) * You will need to log in with a special name and password generated through Special:BotPasswords. See Help:Bots for more information on this process. The Username should be AccountName@BotPasswordName, for example if your username is  and your bot password is called , you would type  . Assuming you are on a secure computer, you probably want to check the Save Password field. Once you have configured your account, log in by double-clicking on the account you want to log in with.
 * 4) Press "Login".

Your bottom bar will now show that you are fully logged in. Now the bot is set and ready to work!

Note: Some wikis use a checkpage that may limit the program to specific users as well as restrict who can edit automatically.

Choose edit options
In this example, we will correct the misspelled name of a character.

First off, we will need to get a list of pages to edit. AutoWikiBrowser has many different list generators to use. In the "Make list" panel, browse the "Source" drop-down and select an appropriate option. If all the pages you're interested in are in the same category, use the "Category" option. If you're more interested in pages that use a certain template, use the "What transcludes page (all NS)" option.

TIP: To make a list of all pages in the main namespace, in the "Make List" panel choose "Special Page" as the source. When you press "Make List" an additional window should appear. Choose "All Pages", select namespace "Main:" and press "OK".

Now that we have our list of pages to check, we need to tell the bot what we want to do. Next to the "Make list" panel is the main editing options section. In order to tell the bot to fix the artist's name, we'll use the "Find and replace" options. Be sure to check the checkbox to enable it, then click "Normal settings". Enter the misspelled name in the "Find" box and the correct spelling in the "Replace with" box. For this example, you can leave the other options alone, though feel free to play around with the settings. Hit "OK" to close the box and set your settings.

Start editing
When you are ready to begin, go to the "Start" tab from the middle section.
 * 1) Enter the "Default Summary". This is the base of your edit summary for each edit. Depending on the options selected, it may be added to.
 * 2) Press "Start".

The program will start searching through the list of pages. When it finds the phrase it is looking for, it will apply all the appropriate changes and display the changes in the main box.

If the changes aren't quite what you had planned on, you can still edit the page using the edit box in the bottom right.

When you are done press "Save" to save changes. If the page doesn't need to be edited, press "Skip" to leave the page unchanged.

TIP: On the "Skip" tab, check the option "Skip if no changes are made". This will cause AutoWikiBrowser to automatically skip pages that won't have any changes.

Fully automatic bot
The example above shows how you can edit semi-automatically. It is quite fast and safe, as you can control each change being made. However, if you wish you can go to "Bots" tab and check the "Auto save" option.

AutoWikiBrowser will now save each change automatically, without any confirmation. Use this option with care, running a few semi-automatic test edits before turning auto save on to test if the bot is functioning properly is strongly recommended.

Find-Replace
Here we will see step-by-step the most basic AWB edit: find a word/sentence and replace it with another word/sentence.
 * 1) First, you will want to make your list of pages you care about. This may be a category, or "What links here" (same functionality as WhatLinksHere), or really any of the options.
 * 2) * It's possible to find differences between two lists using the "List comparer" interface, which can be accessed via the "Tools" tab.
 * 3) Once you have your list of pages, click the "Options" tab to the right and then "Find and replace."
 * 4) Check the box to the left of the text, and then press "Advanced settings." If you just want to do a simple typo correction, you can type the exact text to find into the top box and the replace text below it.
 * 5) * It's also possible to do more advanced find-replace commands using regular expressions. Appropriate times to use regular expressions are if you want to match similar, but not exactly identical, patterns of text. See the next section for some resources on learning how to do this.

Note that find-replace happens BEFORE append. So if you want to append a category but some pages may already have this category present on them, set a rule to find-replace and remove the category and that will be executed before the append.

Blank editing in AWB
AWB is especially useful for automating "null edits", meaning editing and saving with no changes to update caches for the wiki. Just make sure you have deselected the "skip if no replacement" checkbox in the Options low tab.

Pywikibot
To a guide on how to install and set Pywikibot, visit the Pywikibot help page.