User:CnocBride/Installing infoboxes from Wikimedia

From Miraheze Meta, Miraheze's central coordination wiki

Step 1 - Configuring your CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and JS (JavaScript)[edit source]

The first step in ensuring your infoboxes appear like Wikipedia is modifying your "MediaWiki:Common.css" and "MediaWiki:Common.js". This step is technically optional but I would advise highly against it if you want your infoboxes to display and function properly.

Congratulations! Your wiki is now ready to import infoboxes over to your wiki.

NOTE: All infoboxes on Wikipedia are SPECIFICALLY coded for Wikipedia. Most templates will work well for whatever you may need them for but please note some templates do not work because they pull data from other sister projects. Due to the fact these templates are not linked to Wikipedia sister projects.

Step 2 - Exporting the Infobox from Wikipedia[edit source]

Along with templates there are also things called "Modules" which are the base of all templates and decide how all Templates work. For example lets say we want to export the meta template called "Infobox".

  • To export these templates we must find the template page. The template "Infobox" will be under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox. To the right of the page you will see a little box with the "Lua" logo (Lua is a programming language widely used in MediaWiki). Under that you will see the template uses the module called "Infobox". We must go over to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:Infobox.
  • Now go over to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export. In the "Add pages manually:" box you must place "Template:Infobox" and "Module:Infobox" (No quotation marks).
  • Once you have added the two pages then ensure that all three boxes are checked. You should then have a screen like

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  • Click "Export" and a file will be downloaded.

Step 3 - Importing the Infobox into your wiki[edit source]

  • Now go over to your own wikis "Special:Import" page. For example: https://example.miraheze.org/wiki/Special:Import
  • Now click on "Choose file" and navigate to were you saved your exported file from Wikipedia. Once you have selected the file then click upload file.
  • This will now import the templates like they were on Wikipedia. You can now view them at the "Template:Infobox" article.
  • Note: Template:Infobox is only used for making other infoboxes. If you want an infobox for a politician you would use "Template:Infobox officeholder" or if you wanted to write about a person you would use "Template:Infobox person".

More info and notes[edit source]

  • The same can be repeated for other Infoboxes and a variety of other templates. For example if you wanted to import "Infobox person" you would navigate to that page on Wikipedia and find out what modules it uses. You would then place "Template:Infobox person" along with the modules it needs to run. You would export and import it as usual.
  • Large XML files take a long time to import and most of the time fail. Importing templates in small batches is advisable.
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