Help:Infobox migration

The infobox migration tool makes converting "classic" infoboxes to the new portable infoboxes easy!

How to convert an infobox

Find out what should be converted

Go to Special:Insights/nonportableinfoboxes on your community. A list of infoboxes that need to be converted on your wiki will appear. Find a page that uses the template you want to convert and open it in a new tab, so you can check your work after you're done, then click the "Convert!" button.

Some users will also see a box on the right rail of template pages with the heading "Migrate this infobox", allowing quick access to the migration tool.

Review the new infobox template draft

It's a good idea to look at the original markup and familiarize yourself with the help page, both of which are linked in the edit page you just landed on. Not all elements may carry over correctly or at all into the draft version, particularly for more complex infoboxes, so make sure to check it over, and add to or modify it as needed. Specifically: groups, modification of the values given, and layout will not be migrated. The resulting draft will contain the parameters used in the original, in the order in which they appear. You will then need to reshape the <data> (and other) fields into the format you want the infobox to be; you may find that many functions (like hiding groups, coloring elements inline, or changing image widths) are natively inside the portable syntax and that some fields are no longer necessary. Be sure also to copy over the <includeonly> and <noinclude> blocks outside the infobox from the original, so that your documentation and categories are preserved.

Once you're happy with it, hit "Publish". You'll get one more chance to check out the markup afterwards, and if it's satisfactory, hit "Approve This Draft" in the module on the right rail.

Check your work

Go to the tab with the page you found earlier that used the template and compare what it looked like before to what it looks like now. You may need to reload the page with ?action=purge appended to the URL to see the new infobox.

Migration examples and mentoring

On FANDOM's Portability Hub, you can find case studies detailing how other communities migrated their infoboxes. If you get stuck converting your own infobox templates, and could use some guidance, you can also request help for your community!

Background

Infoboxes are everywhere on FANDOM. Pages that include at least one infobox comprise about 60% of traffic in each individual community. And that's for good reason! Infoboxes are popular both here and at Wikipedia, because they're a simple, powerful way to summarize a wiki's content.

This graph helps illustrate just how mobile-oriented the future is - not just for FANDOM, but for the web as a whole. For example, take a look at the recent trends and future growth predictions for mobile traffic (it's staggering).

Infoboxes are special here because not only are they integral to FANDOM wikis, but their wikitext and styling simply don't translate well to devices that aren't a desktop or laptop. We've used "hacky" solutions for a long time; one engineer says a workaround was "does it have two columns? Then it's an infobox," but the time has come for us to have a real, sustainable solution for infoboxes.

FANDOM traffic is changing, and infoboxes need to change with it.

Further help and feedback

• Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
• Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
• Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article
• Learn how to use Fandom in Fandom University: short how-to videos for all levels of experience