Forum:Traveller Wiki is leaving Wikia
Due to changes in licensing policy from both Wikia and Far Future Enterpises the Traveller Wiki can no longer remain at it's current host. It's a sad, but not unexpected, turn of events.
I will be contacting the Wikia staff later today to get the process of removing the wiki. You can get a backup of the Traveller Wiki from the Statistics Page. I will be keeping a copy as well.
I am hoping to put the Traveller wiki back up again on another host which allows for more compatible licensing. I've not made a final decision and part of the reason for posting this note is to ask for your assistance in recommending one. The requirements are:
- Free hosting - there isn't a real organization which can pay for hosting.
- Ability to set License compatible with FFE FUP
Also on the wishlist is the host should use the latest version of Mediawiki to make the transferring easier.
I will be posting this to a few of the Traveller fora I lurk in. If you know of any other places or people that might be interested, please feel free to send along the notice.
I thank everyone for their contributions, energy, and enthusiasm. It has been a good seven years.
Tjoneslo (talk) 13:07, December 3, 2012 (UTC)
Citizens of the Imperium (the T20 website, not the book) started a wiki way back when. It went dead due to the success of our wiki. Perhaps we can get them to revive it (starting with boosting it from 70 entries to 8000 ;-) )? It would require people register in order to edit, but I'm not sure that actually a downside. (I've been vexed more than once by the indeterminancy of 'A Wikia Contributor'). Rancke (talk) 15:27, December 3, 2012 (UTC)
- I've checked into the CotI boards and wiki. The wiki is still there, but of an ancient version. There is no technical staff available to make upgrades. So, while a possibility, it presents more challenges than I'm willing (or have time) to tackle. Tjoneslo (talk) 13:22, December 5, 2012 (UTC)
- I missed your reply and only spotted it today. I think you should post a message on CotI to see if there are ways to solve these problems. It may not do any good, but it can't hurt to try. I'd do it myself, but I think it would be best if it came from you. Rancke (talk) 14:06, December 25, 2012 (UTC)
- I am (probably not surprisingly) the chief librarian at CotI, I will check to see if the version can be upgraded. Dcorrin (talk) 18:56, January 10, 2013 (UTC)
Moving Day
Sorry no real ideas on where to move the Wiki too. It would be a great loss to the Traveller community, particularly with T5 about to be published in full (can't wait to get my "title", it'll probably be some backwater in the middle of nowhere, but it'll be mine!). Have you considered getting a standard hosting account and installing the MediaWiki software? It's a PHP package and shouldn't be much harder than a forum or CMS to install. Having installed lots of those over the years would be happy to asssist. Imperial Grand Survey (talk) 20:33, December 3, 2012 (UTC)
Installing MediaWiki
Just looked at MediaWiki's website. It isn't any more complicated than a forum or CMS to install. All you will need is a hosting account that has PHP (which is almost all of them) and the bandwidth that we would need. Imperial Grand Survey (talk) 20:45, December 3, 2012 (UTC)
- I do have an offer of a free host. The longer term challenge is site maintenance. I'm still working with Wikia and FFE to make a determination of what's going on. Tjoneslo (talk) 13:22, December 5, 2012 (UTC)
- Is there a possiblity of getting the data on a CD that would act similar to this wiki? If so I would be more than happy. Sstefan (talk) 03:43, December 20, 2012 (UTC)
- You can download all of the text (but not the images) from Special:Statistics (see last section of the page). The dump is an XML file which can be imported directly into another mediawiki installation. There are two versions, current pages and all history. The All history is 14MB compressed XML. Tjoneslo (talk) 14:39, December 23, 2012 (UTC)
Forking Wikia
An update for all those following along. I've found a new host for the Traveller wiki. I'm currently in the process of setting things up. We'll be in association with Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com/), a whole suite of Traveller sites.
According to Wikia policy, there is no way to move the a wiki away from Wikia. You are allowed under the terms of the license to "fork" the wiki, that is make a copy. So the Traveller wiki on Wikia will remain, but I'm hoping we can get all the traffic to the new site. Also according to Wikia policy, we're not allowed to publish the forked site on the main page, or create any set of links to the new site. So keep an eye on the various other Traveller forums for an announcement.
The one thing I could use a hand with is the images. I have all of the ludography covers and the PDF trade maps, but am missing the hand generated subsector maps by User:Rindis and Imperial Grand Survey. I'm quite sure there are a few others. Tjoneslo (talk) 23:21, January 12, 2013 (UTC)
- I have all the ones I have done, can we not download the Rindis ones from the remaining version at Wikia? Imperial Grand Survey (talk) 01:57, February 2, 2013 (UTC)
- Just tested, a download of the Rindis images is possible. Leave it to me, I will get all of the maps, both mine and those by Rindis and when things are ready at Traveller Downport they can be re-installed. Plenty of free time at the moment thanks to a change in business and we are yet to ramp things up fully. Imperial Grand Survey (talk) 02:02, February 2, 2013 (UTC)
- An update. I have captured a recent backup of the Traveller Wiki pages, plus all of the images. I've been having an interesting technical challenge getting the information back into the new site. I think I've worked around the problems and am slowly managing to get everything back into shape. I'm hoping that by next weekend I'll have all the pieces done and start making announcements. Thanks for your patience. Tjoneslo (talk) 23:49, February 3, 2013 (UTC)
- Where is the new site exactly? I went to downport, but could not find it. Dcorrin (talk) 15:30, February 4, 2013 (UTC)