converting mediawiki

**Lord Doys** · October 1, 2011

really could use some help/advise on converting mediawiki to vaultwiki.

I have converted my wiki which is over 15.000 pages to vaultwiki folowing the steps in the tutorial. (extra namespaces etc)
the whole conversion took over 9 hours to complete!

BUT, the whole wiki is a mess right now. I think about 70-80% is not converted well
that is way to many page to correct manually! so i am gonna need some help from users that have accomplished such conversions before.

my main problems are:
templates are really bad converted (feels like only half)
example:
original before conversion

Code:

<noinclude>[[Category:Navigation Templates|{{PAGENAME}}]]</noinclude>
<small>[[{{NAMESPACE}}:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] » [[{{NAMESPACE}}:{{{2}}}|{{{2}}}]] » [[{{NAMESPACE}}:{{{3}}}|{{{3}}}]] » [[{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|{{PAGENAME}}]]</small>

after conversion

Code:

<noinclude>[category]Navigation Templates|[var]PAGENAME[/var[/category]]</noinclude>
<small>[wiki="[var]NAMESPACE[/var]:{{{1}}}"]{{{1}}}[/wiki] » [wiki="[var]NAMESPACE[/var]:{{{2}}}"]{{{2}}}[/wiki] » [wiki="[var]NAMESPACE[/var]:{{{3}}}"]{{{3}}}[/wiki] » [wiki="[var]NAMESPACE[/var]:[var]PAGENAME[/var]"][var]PAGENAME[/var[/wiki]]</small>

which displays when included

Code:

<noinclude>]</noinclude>
<small>Main Page » Vosgaard » Dragon Coast » [var]PAGENAME[/var]</small>
<noinclude>]
</noinclude>

BUT the links are ALL red like the pages dont exist.

or:

Code:

<noinclude>
[i]Usage: [/i] [template]tlink|brbox/Begin[/template] [i]text here[/i] [template]tlink|brbox/End[/template]
[i]Takes an optional [b]width[/b] parameter, e.g.: [/i] <code>{{brbox/Begin|width=220px}}</code>
[template]AlsoSee|[template]tlink|brbox[/template][/template]
[category]General Wiki Templates|[var]PAGENAME[/var[/category]]
[hr][/hr]
</noinclude>{| id="brbox" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 style="width:{{{width|240px}}}; float:right; margin:0em 0em 1em 2em; background: #3C3C3C;"
|-
|colspan=11|
[div] style="position:relative;" |
<div style="font-size:1px; position:absolute; top:-3px; left:5px; width:93%; height:1px; background:#111111;">
[/div]
[div] style="font-size:1px; position:absolute; top:-2px; left:5px; width:93%; height:1px; background:#444444;" |

[/div]
[div] style="font-size:1px; position:absolute; top:-1px; left:5px; width:93%; height:1px; background:#888888;" |

[/div]
[div] style="font-size:1px; position:absolute; top: 0px; left:5px; width:93%; height:1px; background:#111111;" |

[/div]
[div] style="font-size:1px; position:absolute; top:-3px; left:0px;" |
[image]brbox-topleft.gif[/image]
[/div]
[div] style="font-size:1px; position:absolute; top:-3px; right:0px;" |
[image]brbox-topright.gif[/image]
[/div]
</div>
|-
|width=1 bgcolor="#111111" |
|width=1 bgcolor="#404040" |
|width=1 bgcolor="#555555" |
|width=1 bgcolor="#111111" |
|width=12|
|
[div] style="height:1em;" |

[/div]

why are some DIVs converted and why are some not??

Many many links are red now, often titles that contain special characters like "(" or ")"
but also for no reason...

Many blue links (pages that should exists) when clicked on it displays: this page contains no text

Another things is that my wiki makes use of SUB pages..
like for example Main_Page/page2/page3 or User:PeterPan/page2/page3
these are being converted to Main_Page_page2_page3 breaking every single link to them

uff writing this down, i dont even know where to start to fix things or makes things work..

hopefully someone got a suggestion.

cheers
arjan

**pegasus** · October 1, 2011

The text for syntax conversion says "Keep in mind that not all Legacy Codes are supported, so you may still have to manually edit some articles." I will attempt to explain what issues I think you're running into here:

#1

Code:

[[Category:Navigation Templates|{{PAGENAME}}]]

Became:

Code:

[category]Navigation Templates|[var]PAGENAME[/var[/category]]

This is because [] are special characters in both MediaWiki and VaultWiki. Having {{PAGENAME}}, which translates to [var]PAGENAME[/var] in such proximity to the closing for [[Category:]] creates a confusing sequence of ]]] for the parser. Should be:

Code:

[category]Navigation Templates|[var]PAGENAME[/var][/category]

Adding spaces around such translations was considered in the past to avoid the collision, but this is not a very common case, and the spaces were considered annoying for more use cases, since vBulletin uses less of an HTML-based parser than MediaWiki did. In general, these cases only appear in templates, which most wikis use in moderation or don't have many of, so they can be adjusted manually rather easily and propagate to large numbers of articles.

#2

Code:

[[{{NAMESPACE}}:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]

Became:

Code:

[wiki="[var]NAMESPACE[/var]:{{{1}}}"]{{{1}}}[/wiki]

The conversion is actually correct, but VaultWiki 3 doesn't use syntactic links in the Namespace:Article format. Instead each namespace has its own tag like [NAMESPACE]Article[/NAMESPACE]. Normal conversions like this work fine, but in the case of {{NAMESPACE}} inside a template, the target namespace is not specified, and the link cannot be fully converted. When the link parses, it shows as "red" because it checks for the article's existence against the wrong namespace in the database. However, as long as the WIKI tag refers to the Default namespace, the link should resolve to the desired article anyway when a user clicks on it.

#3

Code:

&lt;noinclude&gt;
&lt;small&gt;

I'm not sure why <noinclude> didn't convert to [noinclude]. This is supposed to be accounted for and has worked for a number of other forums, including mine.
<small> on the other hand is not supported since it isn't XHTML Transitional 1.0, which vBulletin is, and has not occurred often enough in use cases to be added to the converter. Personally I haven't used that HTML in 10 years, so I'm not sure if this produces the same effect, but you probably want to convert it to something like:

Code:

[size="-1"]text[/size]

#4
Some DIVs are converted while others are not because VaultWiki was optimized to ignore DIVs within DIVs and handle them linearly, since most use cases used TABLEs within TABLEs instead.

Additionally, the following may apply in this and a number of other templates: VaultWiki will only bother converting syntax if BOTH the opening and closing syntax is present. If the opening or closing is missing, the syntax is treated as literal text. Some imported templates may have been designed with opening tags in one template and the closing tags in another, but: a) VaultWiki cannot expect that you designed your templates this way, and b) vBulletin doesn't do this or allow this in its own templating system.

To start, begin cleaning up your most commonly used templates with these things in mind. Even though you have 15,000 articles, you probably don't have quite that many templates, and you will be able to propagate the changes to most articles by updating their templates.