Wikia Migration

Related topics: Wikkii Migration

This page details common questions and issues with the move to Wikia.com in September of 2009. Please feel free to edit this page to add information you think would be widely useful. For specific questions or issues please use the Talk Page.

Why does the wiki look different?

The default skin for Wikia is Monaco, this skin offers lots of features that aren't available using our old skin Monobook. Because we have just moved, many of these features are not yet taken advantage of, however over the coming weeks we will be working hard to make the changes needed to see the benefits of these features.

If you like the old look and feel of the wiki, there are quick and easy instructions below on how to return to the classic style. You should at least try both to see which you prefer.

Why can't I log in?

If your user name was already taken by someone on Wikia, your name has been changed to "ASHERON-Your Name". You can change this name if you wish, or merge it with an existing Wikia account. Please add your request here. (These merges will be done as a batch next week). More detailed information can be found below.

Reason for the Move

The wiki originally started in late 2007 on a small shared hosting solution and slowly grew until around August of 2008 when the 100th patch Ancient Powers came. With that patch the wiki's popularity really took off and in late 2008 the wiki was shut down by our host due to the strain it was putting on the server.

A few weeks later the wiki moved to a new host that provided us with essentially a dedicated server and lots of bandwidth. However the wiki continued growing, both in readership and content. Hundreds of AC players have helped build the wiki to over 15,000 articles and 25,000 images. In late August we learned that we had outgrown this host as well and it was time to find yet a new host.

Our options were discussed here on our Forum and on Turbine's boards. Then the decision was made to move to Wikia.com, a professional wiki hosting service that provides free hosting in exchange for advertisements. This decision was not taken lightly, and the primary concern was to ensure the long term availability of the wiki so that contributors can have confidence that the material they submit will not disappear.

No one has been compensated or paid to make this move. Ad revenue goes to Wikia and Wikia pays for the servers/bandwidth/techs to maintain/upgrade things. We expect this to be our final move as Wikia is able to allocate resources as needed so we won't be outgrowing our host again.

Monaco Skin

See also Help:Customizing Monaco

You do not have to use the new Wikia standard skin of Monaco. You can use any of the other options. If you prefer the old appearance, set your skin to Monobook and untick "Let the admins override my skin choice" under Special:Preferences.

New Features

WYSIWYG Editor

See also Help:Rich text editor

Wikia introduced a new rich text editor ("what you see is what you get" or WYSIWYG) in the summer of 2009 that may be more useful to first time editors. For experienced contributors to the wiki this tool will most likely make it slower and more difficult to edit pages. You can turn off this feature by going to Special:Preferences and under Editing untick "Enable Rich Text Editing". If you are using the monobook skin it is not an available option.

Because the editor is new, it is still under active development and still being improved for usability. Consequently, based on feedback, we may decide to disable this feature for the time being once the site is live. (There are currently some undesirable sideeffects such as altering table code formatting that may be fixed in the future.) You can disable this editor on specific pages by including:

__NOWYSIWYG__

NOTE: This editor has been disabled sitewide due to widespread undesirable side effects. It may may be reenabled in the future if improvements are made that no longer create issues for our particular wiki. (Oct 2009)

Widgets

Go to Special:Widgets for a list of all available widgets. To see your widgets at work go to Special:WidgetDashboard.

Widgets work best with one of the new skins, eg. Monaco.

Monobook Skin

You do not have to use the new Wikia standard skin of Monaco. You can use any of the other options. If you prefer the old appearance, set your skin to Monobook and untick "Let the admins override my skin choice" under Special:Preferences in the Skins sections. There is also a link to your preferences page in the drop down menu when you click the "More" button in the upper right corner (once you switch to monobook there will instead be a "My Preferences" link in the upper right).

User Names

ACC Wiki's user database has been merged with Wikia's. The major benefit is that you will have a single login to all of Wikia's wikis (of which there are now over six thousand).

Methodology

1. If there are two accounts with the same name on Wikia and ACC Wiki, then we compare email addresses. If they match, we set that name as one account, and all remains the same for you.
2. If there are two accounts and the email addresses don't match, then we set the ACC Wiki account to "ASHERON-name". We can then look at that individually with you, and figure out how to resolve the name conflict.
3. If you have a unique account on ACC Wiki, with no matching Wikia name, then we automatically make that name yours on Wikia. It doesn't matter whether you use the account elsewhere or not, you will be "you" on the whole of Wikia.

If you have accounts of the same name on ACC Wiki and on Wikia, please make sure your email address is the same on both accounts. To do this, go to your preferences page, make sure the "email" field is correct, and authenticate your email by clicking the link in the email sent to you.

If you have accounts of different names on ACC Wiki and Wikia, and you would like them merged, please say so on the talk page. Again, please ensure that the email addresses in both accounts match.