MiddleWiki About - 2026 Site Move

Milesent Vibert purchased a Go Daddy site and installed MediaWiki in 2024, but stalled on going live for various reasons. In 2025 she took back up the crusade, enlisting the advice of Ginna Vettori (who runs the very excellent Cleftlands wiki)

Fall of 2025 the project kicked off with meetings. There were several attempts to export/import the existing Wiki database into the new install that all failed; there were just too many versions and upgrades between. It was suggested to install an earlier copy of the wiki and upgrade it multiple times, but this was deemed likely to encounter problems; if we needed to solve issues upgrading from version 1 to 2, then from 2 to 3, then 3 to 4, etc. Finally it was determined to go forward with manual importing and exporting of pages. MediaWiki does have an export/import feature and indeed, 100s of pages can be imported and exported at once. However, for quality control issues the team chose to move a few pages at a time and lock (protect) those pages on the old site once moved to prevent their being updated.

The old site admin, Grant Root, was able to give Milesent an export of the database and all of the image files. She was able to import the image files directly and that was done in October 2025. (This did become a problem as some images were updated after that point and had to be manually updated on the new site.)

Milesent originally hoped to be done with the site move by January of 2026, however as of February 16th, we are still below 5,000 pages (of 7,500) moved. Various delays included server outages on the old site.

Team members

• Milesent Vibert - Project Manager, set up server, configuration changes, moved pages, moved image files, investigated account creation options and database import options. Learned a lot!
• Edward Brackenburye moved over 1/3 of pages
• Raffaele da Cernia moved over 1/3 of pages
• Roisin de Burgh - verification and checking of templates that aren't used
• Magarhita
• Dai
• Gianna Vettori - Configuration consultant
• Seamus MacBain - investigated account creation options and database import options
• Tali
• Zygmunt
• Philip the Pilgrim

Meeting Minutes

March 10th, 2026

We have been busy and a lot of work has been completed!

Initial page move complete! huzzah! Big thanks to Edward and Raeffe who did most of the page moving. You guys are awesome.

Roisin - found a missing page (Baronial award), noting on to do list, she will continue to look for missing pages on her site review. Also been updating populace pages with outdated templates. (Other team members are welcome to join her on checking.)

Milesent Account Requests - enabled, however can't approve account requests until I get email notifications working for password resets. Started on that, GoDaddy does have email settings, need to make sure I get the settings right, however. Unfortunately, Captcha is not working, grr. Extension was already loaded in our install, however when I enable it, it gives an error that the underlaying captcha settings are not there. May be a database issue? (That was what prevented account request enabling not to work, files were there but underlaying database tables had not been created.) Milesent will continue to troubleshoot. First get email setup, then will revisit Captcha.

we've had one account request; Katherine Coscombe. I've informed her that she's now our beta tester for account creation. :) Milesent demonstrated how to manage account requests. You need to be in the Bureaucrat group to do account requests. Some of our helpers are in admin group only and do not see confirm account requests on special pages. If you need/want to be a part of account creation process, let me know to add you to bureaucrats.

Milesent installed JsonConfig extension and added the first two configuring lines to LocalSettings, not sure about the others Dai sent as some of the settings seem to be server specific. Will discuss that with him. Tuesdays aren't good for Dai; may set up a meeting on a different night so he can attend. (Not Wednesday!)

We have started Re-creating category pages (See To Do list for complete list of categories) started with the most linked to categories, should go quickly. We've also started Re-categorizing files - Edward has started Arms Images and Award Images Double category: C&I Images and Scroll Images; C&I seems more accurate but Scroll is more used... decision on which to keep? Scribal Images? Added a poll to discord Middlewiki page and to our Facebook page to get folks to weigh in on what category we should use going forward.

There have been some issues with the new site running slow, worrisome. Load balancer? May need to visit our configuration and ensure we have enough resources on the site.

Raeffe has been going through his punch list; he and Dai are working on our remaining troublesome templates.

Good job team! Keep up the good work and let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

-Milesent Project manager.

February 24th, 2026

Middlewiki team meeting 2/24/2026

we're at 5,254 pages moved, yay! about 2,000 to go, some of which won't be moved (talk pages, user pages)

Discord message: Mikolai Golubin (Fenix) - I think that the "Pages using duplicate arguments in Template Calls" is presently mostly an issue with the last couple lines of Template:Navbox_subgroup, where it's causing two arguments not present to become an argument called "void"

Raeffael and Margarita send regrets, they're out and won't be home in time for the meeting. He's done moving all of his sections and they are ready for review. Going forward Raeffael will be focusing on punch list items such as the errant template issues we have.

Dai is back from Europe, and working on the extensions again. We're missing another one - JsonConfig. (Milesent will add!) Dai will continue working to see what he can find in terms of the minimum we might be missing.

Those who attended discussed if it is time to move the "Current Events" task list to our new site. Yes! -Milesent will do. And... has done. "MiddleWiki To Do List" is the new page on the new site (linked on the Main page)

We were low on disk space on the new site; error in backup configuration. I think I got it now (excluded the clone backup of the site from daily backups, hee.) May review how long to keep backups as well. Milesent shall continue to monitor our disk usage. (Note: after deleting excess backups we went form 47 gigs used to 20, our quota is 50 gigs. If the site grows to need more than that, we will examine purchasing more storage space, though now is NOT a good time for that with storage prices soaring.)

Roisin is doing final reviews; first section done! (others welcome to help her)

Everyone is reminded to note when you find problems on the project plan (which I will move to new site. there, Middlewiki To Do List is the new page on the new site! https://middlewiki.org/index.php/MiddleWiki_To_Do_List Included link on old Current Events page.

New page on the new site for historical information about this site move :) https://middlewiki.org/index.php/MiddleWiki_About_-_2026_Site_Move

Request Account workflow - not working yet; Milesent spent several hours on it this week :) I did get the request an account form to load, but it errored out. May be a configuration setting (currently it is disabled, will try again soon.) Good news about this ConfirmAccount tool; we can configure the request form and approvals will happen inside the wiki. Access approval can be granted to a group (Admins "Beurocrats" or a group we decided to create for the purpose. I say we start with "Admins" and revisit once we're live on if we want to create a larger account approver group.

Milesent is teaching a "MiddleWiki and You" class at Masque of Courtly Love this Saturday; obviously I was hoping we'd be further along by now, heh, but I'm hoping to talk about the project and how the new wiki will be easier for folks to use. (We may create or update some user pages in the class.)

Next meeting: March 10th

February 10th, 2026

Short, quality meeting tonight. We are at 4,600+ pages moved. The Visual Editor has been enabled (huzzah!) All sections ready to review have "Ready for final review" after them on the Current Events page. Many redirects are resolving now that more pages have been moved. Final reviewers; mark if redirects are resolved and I expect "Finished except for redirects or issues" will be marked after most sections. Only one section is currently unclaimed. Still one template having issues - Navbox - Infobox issues two missing templates: Template: userpage and Template: ASDate Updated Photos - note in current events if users updated their profile pics since image files were moved and Milesent will take care of it Roisin had trouble getting in this week on the old site. "Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls" "How to Pages" will need to be updated for new site. As we discover content issues, add to the list to address after move (unnecessary pages or redirects, etc.) We will reconvene in two weeks. -Milesent Project Manager

January 27th, 2026

Thank you everyone, another good team meeting tonight. We're currently over 3,500 pages migrated (4,000 ish to go!) We discussed account creation; given the volume, our "if all else fails" is to just continue with manual account creation. Current plan is to institute a captcha/prove you're human tool (Cloud flare is currently available free) to reduce spammers and then a manual approval for accounts. Default install of MediaWiki does not have a graphical editor; want to turn one on for sure to make it easier for the populace to edit and update pages. Milesent investigating this. Milesent will look at the links Seamus shared for account creation strategy Edward and Raeffael are busy moving pages and confirmed what sections they are tackling next. Zygmunt and Roisin are going to quality control; review pages that have been migrated and confirm they are good or note any issues to be addressed. There are 7 image files which did not transfer to the new site; Raef noted two images on the Great Book page were corrupted and Aeryton Archers image is missing. Once we reach the 6,000 pages moved mark we should test account creation so we can go live quickly once we finish migration. We want to continue these meetings (and open them to more people) after migration to address issues with individual pages or decisions about the wiki in general. Our next meeting will be in two weeks! At your service, -Milesent- Project manager

January 13th, 2026

Tonight's meeting was a quick touch base; porting pages has continued apace, Raeffael and Edward Brackenburye and I have been doing a lot of porting (go team!) as of right now Special:Statistics shows 2,873 pages on the new site (including talk pages and redirects, etc.) The old site has 7,511 pages. Watch out for redirects when porting pages; we will want to go back and check that the redirects are working properly once the page they point to is ported. We decided to get rid of the Disambigulation pages template; it only has 7 pages in it. We fixed the "Create page" page and "Create new page" page by deleting them 🙂 hee. THere do seem to be a couple more templates we may need to visit specifically the nav box template does not have a boarder unless you call it; we may want to set a style template for the site to do that (something to look into) Update the "Move templates" section on current events with any template issues please. Raeffael is going to poke Seamus about account creation which he's investigating. See y'all in two weeks! - Milesent Project Manager

December 30th, 2025

We had a short, but quality meeting. The major templates have been moved! We can now port pages! WOOT! We went over the process: 1. Claim a section of pages under "Move Pages" on Current Events on the old site. You can sub-section a section if that's easier for you. 2. Go to "All Pages" under special pages and select your start and ending pages; this will give you a list of all those pages. Copy this list. 3. Go back to "Special Pages" and choose "Export" 4. Paste the list of pages and export to a file. 5. On the new site, go to "Special Pages" and go to "Import" 6. Import the file. Voila! the pages are moved! 7. Verify the pages moved properly 8. Lock the pages on the old site (click "Protect" on each page and put "moved to new site" as the reason.) Feel free to share steps, one person can lock and another verify, etc. Our next meeting will be January 13th at 6:30 pm Central, 7:30 pm Eastern. See me if you'd like to be added to the google calendar event. I will make an announcement on the Midrealm page about our status, letting folks know that it is wise to not make any updates while we are porting pages. Seamus? You're in charge of investigating new account creation methodologies 😉 Since I already tested the porting with numbered pages (reign pages and crown tournament pages mostly) I am taking the first section. I need to verify the pages I already ported haven't been updated since I ported them and import the rest of that section. Go team! Questions, comments, concerns? Let me know. -Milesent- Project manager

December 11th, 2025

Good meeting, thank you team. We've decided our next meeting will be Tuesday, December 30th at 6:30 pm Central, 7:30 pm Eastern. Dai has been working on Template Documentation and found another extension that was needed, ParserFunctions, which Milesent has enabled. Milesent was supposed to be looking at Startbox/EndBox, but hasn't, mea culpa. Will keep that on my to do. Note Sir Zygmunt asked for an account on the new site, he wasn't able to attend tonight's meeting however, will be including him on the invites going forward (Welcome Zyg!) Seamus is looking at extensions for adding new user accounts; the hope is to find a more automated way to add new users. From a quick look it seems there are two basic choices on how to keep spam at bay, 1. Moderation or 2. Only authorized users (what we're doing on the current site) We should think about how we want to handle this going forward, he hopes to have more info to present at the next meeting. Roisin is going to look at the Ayerton Baronial templates; they're the only Barony using separate templates and rather than port those, she will just copy the content to the pages and un-link the templates (They can be re-created if necessary in the future, saves us the work of getting those templates up to spec.) Everyone else keep poking at templates, as you find things that are needed (like that ParserFuctions thingy) let me know. Raef noted an error with successionBox, missing json config extension, cannot load banner tag. Hrm... shall continue investigation/troubleshooting. See you Dec 30th! -Milesent Project Manager

November 13th, 2025

Notes from tonight's meeting, thank you everyone who attended: Raffaele and Magarhita send apologies, their flight was delayed so they're up in the air right now and unable to attend. Note: Grant posted that the old site is experiencing slowness issues right now, please be patient if you're working on the old site. Discovered a setting change needed; users were able to make changes while not logged on, oops! Fixed that! -Mi Templates update - Scibunto extension added and TemplateData extension. we found out what happens if I enable an extension that's not installed (oops!) Dai noted that we need to add TemplateStyles - Milesent will work on that; there are likely more extensions needed, but now we know how to add them it should go easier. Roisin has id'd some templates which are needed by template:documentation we agreed to remove Template:A as it's only used on a few pages and purely decorative Template Documentation - Dai is working on, ignore templates that require that for now, it is way out of date with current Mediawiki standard (not surprising) Succession box template is needed for great officer templates, Milesent is going to concentrate on that one next. Note that Start Box and End box have been replaced in newer wikis, may end up having to manually replace those templates on pages (Or make a redirect from Start Box to S-Box, as it were.) Categories - creates the categories, but isn't creating the category page. Will probably have to re-create category pages; note some existing category pages do have content so we'll need to double check that, adding that to the project plan! We will continue to meet every two weeks to keep in touch and keep on task, see Mi for details/questions/comments/concerns

October 30th, 2025

Good meeting tonight, thank you everyone who attended. We went over what has been done since our last meeting (Visible on the Current Events page of the site.) All image files have been moved; a few files failed to link, all had corrupted file names and I believe all had newer versions uploaded. (knock on wood). Biggest issue right now is Templates. Roisin de Burgh volunteered to go through the list of templates on the site to identify templates that we can safely get rid of and mark what the templates are for on the list (which will be helpful in prioritizing and making sure they're applied properly.) We do need to set up a plug in on the site, Lua, which is used by many of the Mediawiki built in templates (that's a to do for me or Gianna as it has to be done on the server side.) I'm asking that whenever an item is marked done on the to do list, another member of the team check the work and put "verified" and your name after the "Done", just to proof each other and hopefully catch any errors. Raffe Philip Chrysler and Magarhita Margaret Chrysler were working on the MKings template, which relies on the Navbox template. Milesent (that's me) is going to look at that template, Raffe is moving on to the Territories template. We've decided to use the existing Middlewiki discord channel to communicate, please see Roisin de Burgh for assistance with joining discord. Our next meeting is in two weeks, same bat time, same bat channel! At your service, -Milesent- Project Manager

October 16th, 2025

Attendance: Milesent, Edward, Rosin, Tali, Gianna, Seamus, Philip Milesent went over the efforts thus far to import the database to the new server; long story short it won't work, we're too many versions behind. (We knew this... but it's been confirmed.) The team quickly moved to the decision to import the pages manually. Milesent tested the workflow with the Reign pages. We'll be keeping track of the project on the Current Events page of the wiki: http://middlewiki.midrealm.org/.../MiddleWiki:Current... Step 1: Move/Re-make our templates. Milesent is going to compare our template list with the built-in wiki templates that are already on the new site to make the to-do list and post to the Current Events page. Volunteers will mark the templates they have moved and/or any issues with each template. Milesesnt is to make accounts on the new server for our volunteers. (Not able to attend the meeting, but still want to help out? Bill Dai Sutton? Let me know and I will make you an account too.) Milesent will make a post on the Midrealm FB group and Discord about the move to let our populace know what is up. We are not going to make any more new accounts from now until the move is completed and we will lock pages on the wiki as they are ported over. Once templates are done we will start moving pages in batches (Milesent demonstrated the process very briefly) Claim the batch you are moving; export/import that batch, verify they ported ok or report errors. Lock original pages. We will meet again in two weeks, same bat time, same bat channel. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Let me know! - Milesent 🙂 Project Manager 😉