Community Central:Moving your wiki to FANDOM

What's better about Wikia?
At Wikia, you are part of a large wiki community and have the support of staff and helpers whenever you need it.

Wikia is free! Free in terms of money, and also in terms of freedom. All content on Wikia is released under a free license - the company does not claim any copyright over the content - it will always belong to the community who are free to use it, edit it, download it, redistribute it, or whatever they like.

Wikia runs on the latest version of MediaWiki and has a lot of extra features developed especially for our wikis.

Wikia is run on stable servers with offsite backups so you never to worry about losing all the content you've worked so hard on.

There are no limits to the size your wiki can be at Wikia. WoWWiki has more than 50,000 articles about the World of Warcraft game and is freely hosted by Wikia. We hope your wiki will also grow to that size!

Wikia can promote your wiki across other wikis to drive more readers and potential contributors to your site.

What new features does Wikia have?
Inside Wikia details some of the new and upcoming features.

A few examples:
 * 1) Widgets! Drag these to your sidebar to view lists of the most popular articles, the top users, latest edits, or even the weather.
 * 2) No spam! Wikia has about 20 different ways of fighting spam, so you can focus on the content and not on reverting the spammers.
 * 3) Upload multiple images at once or import images from flickr.
 * 4) Embed YouTube videos or collaborative videos from Kaltura in articles.
 * 5) Edit count tool to find out how many edits you or others have made.
 * 6) Image gallery shows all the newest images uploaded here.
 * 7) Simple page creation - especially good for new wiki users since you don't need to know wiki-markup to use this. The category cloud makes it really easy to add categories.
 * 8) Problem reports shows you when a reader has noticed a problem that they can't fix themselves.
 * 9) String functions and parser functions for making complex and powerful templates.

How can I move my wiki to Wikia?
If you and your community are ready to move to Wikia, contact Angela who will help with this. You can contact her on her talk page or by email to angela at wikia.com.

It doesn't matter whether or not you have direct access to the database - we can still move your wiki. We can integrate any extensions you are using and make sure the wiki continues to work in the same way it does now.

If my wiki moves to Wikia, will all my content still be there?
Yes, all of the text and images from your wiki will be transferred, including user pages and templates. If we import your user database, or if you make an account under the same name, your old edits can be attributed to you and you'll be able to check how many edits you've made using the edit count tool.

Can I change the design?
There are a variety of skins you can choose in preferences once you log in, including the traditional monobook (wikipedia) skin. If you choose one of the new quartz skins, you'll have access to extra features, like widgets that you can drag to your sidebar. There are a few different quartz designs, including sapphire and gaming. There is also a new skin being developed called Monaco which will be live soon.

Who will control the wiki?
Wikia claims no ownership over your wiki. Each Wikia site is managed by the communities that create them. While we're here to help with any problems you have, staff do not interfere with the content or policies of your wiki.

Will there be advertising on the wiki?
Logged in users rarely see ads if they are using the quartz skin. See inside.wikia.com for an example of how the wiki looks to registered users. Unregistered users will typically see a single ad on the page.

Will the URL of my wiki change?
While exceptions can be made for very large wikis, most Wikia sites can be found on a subdomain of wikia.com. If you own a domain, the quickest and easiest solution is to redirect that to the new URL at Wikia. Using Wikia's domain is an advantage for two main reasons:
 * 1) users are automatically logged in to all wikis on Wikia.com which makes it easier to edit across different wikis and more likely you will get casual editors dropping in from other wikis, and
 * 2) it can help to improve your Google page rank as sites on wikia.com are generally ranked quite high.

Can I leave Wikia later if I change my mind?
We'd be sad to see you go, but all content on Wikia is released under a free license, which makes it possible for any person to leave Wikia and take a copy of the content and legally set up a new site with it under the same license. We make database backups publicly available so you can be sure you will always have a copy of the content if you need it.

I have forums, can Wikia host those too?
Yes, Wikia can also provide hosting for forums, blogs, and mailing lists. If your forum is on the phpBB software, you have the option of using Wikia's modified phpBB which allows users to log in with their wiki account and to use wiki formatting and linking in their forum posts. There is no cost for hosting software that is used by your wiki community.