Help:Importing and exporting pages

Sometimes you need to export wiki pages from one Wikia to another, or from an outside MediaWiki installation to import here. MediaWiki provides a Special:Export page which allows you to create an XML file containing the pages you choose. Anyone can export, but only admins can use Special:Import.

There are several steps to this process.


 * Generate a list of articles
 * The simplest way to get a list of articles is to use the "Add pages from category:" field at the top of the Special:Export page, which will automatically add a list of articles in a given category to the Export list.


 * If that isn't possible, you can copy and paste lists of article titles from a Category page, Special:Allpages, a DPL list, or any other source of page titles. (You might need to work with the pasted list in your favorite external notepad, word processing or spreadsheet program to get a list of plain page titles with one title per line.)  You must include the namespace if you wish to export from anything other than the main article space (e.g., Talk:Something, User:Someone, Template:Infobox).


 * If the list is long, or the pages have many revisions, you will probably need to break the list down into smaller chunks, as MediaWiki cannot import XML files larger than about 1.8MB.


 * Choose whether or not to include page histories.
 * Including page histories is almost always the desired choice, as it makes the required Creative Commons attribution for authorship much simpler. Unless you have a specific reason to want only the latest version, uncheck "Include only the current revision, not the full history"


 * Choose whether or not to include templates.
 * Checking this will export all templates and sub-templates required by the page. If you do not export them, the pages may not display properly when imported.  You will either need to add the templates to the destination wiki later, or edit pages to remove template code.


 * Save the exported file.
 * Check "Save as file" to save the export to your computer as an XML file. If the reported file size is larger than about 1.8MB, you will need to reduce the size of your Export list and try again, so that you can import the desired pages in smaller chunks.


 * Import the file to the new wiki.
 * Go to Special:Import on the destination wiki and click the "browse" button to find the XML file on your computer. The imported pages will be listed on Recent changes and on Special:Log/import.