Help:Domain name

Every Wikia is hosted on a subdomain of Wikia.com.

Subdomain names are usually generic words so that people can guess the location of a Wikia. For example, a Wikia about education would be at education.wikia.com.

Wikia in multiple languages may have the language code before the subdomain name. For example, the French WikiMac is at fr.mac.wikia.com. In these cases, the subdomain name will usually be a portal pointing to each language version. See miqra.wikia.com for example.

When a wiki is requested, a name for the wiki can be specified. This will be used as the subdomain name.



Advantages of using a Wikia domain name

 * 1) You can have a generic name for your wiki, such as education rather than needing to find a free domain name or using an obscure word.
 * 2) You never need to worry about renewing the domain name, or the increasing costs of domain registration.
 * 3) You don't need to worry about whether someone has registered the .org or .co.uk of your domain when you've only bought the .com version. This leads to less chance of people going to the wrong top level domain.
 * 4) You don't need to worry about getting your site indexed by search engines since Wikia is already in many search engines and directories.
 * 5) The wiki will be obviously part of the Wikia brand, so people instantly know the site is openly editable, GFDL, properly spam controlled, and not about to disappear.



Exceptions
Memory Alpha has the domain name memory-alpha.org because, although it is a wiki hosted by Wikia, it is not strictly a Wikia. This wiki was in existence before Wikia and a deal made with MyOO, the former hosting company of Memory Alpha means that certain exceptions are in place for this wiki; it has its own domain name, and does not use the GFDL.

Similarly Uncyclopedia has the domain name uncyclopedia.org as it is not a Wikia either.

There are no other exceptions to the domain name policy of Wikia at this time.

See also: Why use Wikia?