You have created your bot account and feel ready to use a bot software? This is the right place: we'll see step-by-step how to get AutoWikiBrowser and how to use it. In short, you'll have to follow these steps:
Download AutoWikiBrowser to your computer. When the download is done, launch AutoWikiBrowser and you are ready to begin.
Download AWB.
Launch AWB.
This is the window you'll see.
Choose the wiki[]
Choose the wiki where you are going to use the bot:
Go to Options → Preferences → Site.
Go to Options.
Go to Preferences.
Go to Site.
From the drop-down list, choose "custom" as your project.
Select Project and choose custom.
Note that you could also choose "Fandom" from the drop-down list and then type the first part of the URL of your community (for example, "fandubbing" should be entered for the "fandubbing.fandom.com" community) but this works only for English wikis.
Select "https://" instead of "http://".
Choose https://.
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.
Enter the domain name of the wiki (for example help.fandom.com) you want into the text field (n.b. don't include "https://" since you specified that above/before).
Write the wiki url.
When you are done, save changes with the "OK" button.
Click OK.
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.
Go to File → Log in/Profiles....
Once you are connected with the wiki, click File.
Click Log in/Profiles... Note that this step has to be done every time you select or change the wiki you are going to edit.
Enter the bot's username and password.
You will need to log in with a special name and password generated through Special:BotPasswords. See Help:Bots#Using Special:BotPasswords for more information on this process. The Username should be AccountName@BotPasswordName, for example if your username is <insert name here>-bot and your bot password is called AWB, you would type <insert name here>-bot@AWB. 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.
Press "Login".
Enter username and password, then click Login.
Your bottom bar will now show that you are fully logged in. Now the bot is set and ready to work!
If your AWB window has written in the right bottom corner both the bot account and the wiki url, you are correctly connected!
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[]
We need to tell the bot which pages to edit and what to do in them: the order of these two steps is not relevant. For our guide, we'll begin telling the bot what we want to do.
Next to the "Make list" panel, there 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.
Select the Find and Replace checkbox and click Normal settings.
Write the word/sentence you want to replace in the Find column.
Write the new word/sentence in the Replace with column.
You can choose which replacements have to be case-sensitive and which ones you don't want to be performed for now.
You can also choose if ignoring some contexts: links, name of files, text between <nowiki> tags and commented text and/or content in templates, notes, link targets and section headers.
It's advisable to select the Add replacements in edit summary checkbox to make the bot's edits easier to track. When the instruction is complete, click OK.
Choose the pages to edit[]
Now we'll need 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.
Choose the source: Category is the default source and fills the list with all the pages in a given category. Category (recursive) fills the list with all the pages in a given category and in all its sub-categories.
Source: Category fills the list with all the pages (all namespaces) in the given category.
Source: Category fills the list with all the pages (all namespaces) in the given category.
Source: Category (recursive) fills the list with all the pages (all namespaces) in the given categoryand its sub-categories.
Choose the source: Special page allows you to open a source panel after clicking "Make list" where you can fill the list with all the pages in a given namespace; What links here (all NS) fills the list with all the pages that link to a given page; What transcludes page (all NS) fills the list with all the pages that transclude a given page (usually a template).
Select What links here, write a target page and press Make list...
...for a list of every content page that links the given page.
Select What links here (all NS), write a target page and press Make list...
...for a list of every page in whatever namespace that links the given page.
Select What transcludes page, write a target page and press Make list...
...for a list of every content page that embeds the given page.
Select What transcludes page (all NS), write a target page and press Make list...
...for a list of every page in whatever namespace that embeds the given page.
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".
Choose the Source: Special page and click Make list to open the panel.
Select a type of source - the default source is All Categories but the most useful are usually All Pages (no redirects) for all the content pages or All Pages to include redirects too.
Select the namespace of the pages you want to fill the list with - if you don't select anything, the default option is Main so the list will be filled with all the content pages in the main namespace. Other useful namespace options are File, Template and Category.
Selecting all pages in the Main namespace.
All the pages in the Main namespace are listed.
Selecting all pages in the File namespace.
All the pages in the File namespace are listed.
Selecting all pages in the Template namespace.
All the pages in the Template namespace are listed.
Selecting all pages in the Category namespace.
All the pages in the Category namespace are listed.
Alternatively, you can just fill the list manually, either writing all pages one by one in the input box or copy-pasting a ready list in the white box (all the lists you paste here will be appended after the current list). Right above the input box, there is the pagecount that shows how many pages are in the list.
Example of use[]
Setting and getting ready to edit: we are logged in the wiki with our bot account, we told it which pages to edit and what to do in them. The bar at the bottom also gives us some more info like our bot account's right, how many pages it edited and how many pages it skipped.
Let's click Start.
This is what we'll now see: the old content of the page, the new content of the page after our edits and the edit box where we can adjust the new content manually.
Besides the edits done according to our instructions, AWB applies some predefined automatic changes. These could also be bad or not-so-good for our particular page, so we'll see how to revert them.
Double clicking a paragraph will revert the edits done in it. Edits in other parts of the page will still be there but the double click reverts ALL the changes in that paragraph, including eventual edits we want to keep. In that case, we'll have to adjust the content in the edit box.
Going through the doubl click and edit box procedure can be time-wasting when there are multipleinstances. In our example, we put a break to give some space between two sections with an image between them: AWB wants to replace our break with a template that we don't have nor want to have: let's see a quicker procedure to avoid these unwanted changes.
We can add more instructions to do the opposite of AWB's predefined automatic changes. To make them work, we have to select their checkboxes in the "After fixes" column.
Now our bot will revert the predefined automatic changes we don't want. This procedure is still a little time-consuming so we'll now see the quickest way to do it.
Let's go to the "Options" tab and deselect the "Apply general fixes" checkbox. When we press "Start" again, AWB won't apply its predefined automatic changes but only our intended edits.
Since we didn't select the checkboxes in the "CaseSensitive" column, our instructions ignore the capital letters in the original text, treating lowercase and uppercase letters the same way and replacing them the same way.
When we are satisfied with the changes, we can click Save. We can also change the edit summary before saving.
This was the page before our bot's edits...
...and this is the page after our bot's edits.
So the bot has replaced the old text with the new text and associated this edit with a clear edit summary.
Going to Recent Changes, we'll see that it filters out bots' edits by default.
Disabling the "not bot" filter will show bots' edits.
No changes[]
If the page doesn't need to be edited, press "Skip" to leave it unchanged. When you press "Save", you update the cache of that page for the wiki: doing so when no changes were done and you didn't edited manually is called a null edit.
If you are not interested in null edits and you don't want to click "Save" or "Skip" every time the page remains the same with no changes, go to the "Options" tab and select the "skip if no replacement" checkbox...
...or go to the Skip tab and select the "Skip if no changes are made" checkbox: this will cause the bot to automatically skip pages that won't have any changes.
Fully automatic bot[]
The example above showed 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 the "Bots" tab and check the "Auto save" option. AutoWikiBrowser will now save each change automatically without any confirmation needed.
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. You should especially consider every scenario where your instructions may cause unwanted side effects.
To let your bot save automatically without your input, go to the Bots tab and select the "Auto save" checkbox. You can also set a delay between edits.
While your bot is editing in auto save mode, you can stop it, add your manual edits or change the instructions and then start again.
