Wikispaces

Wikispaces is one of the major wiki hosts (claims to have over 1.5 million wikis and 10 million users) with a mix of free and paid plans, and a focus on K-12 education. The site will close down in 2018 (on July 31 for free wikis, at the end of the year for paid ones), leaving most of those users scrambling for a new host to migrate to. MediaWiki might be one of the better options, but right now there is little tooling and no documentation. Let's change that!

Migration tools

 * Wikispaces markup is vaguely similar to MediaWiki markup - trying to import it directly will break the content, but not horribly (links, lists, sections will continue to work).
 * nanotube/wikispacestomediawiki seems to be a converter script in Python, unmaintained for a long time though. (features)
 * importWikispaces.php is a migration script in the form of a MediaWiki maintenance script; it can import pages with full history, users and images and files. To use it, copy it to a MediaWiki installation's  directory, and issue the following:
 * Apparently in the current form only works with paid spaces and has a couple shortcomings - see discussion here.
 * Apparently in the current form only works with paid spaces and has a couple shortcomings - see discussion here.


 * vermuz/wikimediawikiscripts is another, much older migration script in Python.

For creating or finding a wiki, see Manual:Installing MediaWiki and Hosting services. For finding paid help, see Professional development and consulting.

Also, some wiki hosts claim to do the migration for you: CiviHosting, MyWikis

Feature matching

 * Features:
 * WYSIWYG editor -> Extension:VisualEditor
 * Picture and File Manager -> VisualEditor uploads?
 * Easy Linking -> VisualEditor / Extension:WikiEditor
 * Search -> built-in or Extension:CirrusSearch
 * Easy backup: -> ???
 * Discussion forums -> Extension:StructuredDiscussions?
 * Wikispam Protection -> Manual:Combating spam
 * Web Folders (WebDAV) -> ???
 * Math Formulas -> Extension:Math
 * Most other mentioned features are suported by MediaWiki out of the box.
 * Wikitext features:
 * basic text formatting, links, anchors, images, tables are supported by default MediaWiki (see Manual:Configuring file uploads).
 * Syntax highlighting → Extension:SyntaxHighlight
 * References → Extension:Cite (uses same syntax)
 * RSS feeds → Extension:RSS
 * Variables → Help:Magic words
 * Including the contents of another wiki page -> Help:Templates
 * Mathematics → Extension:Math
 * Widgets → Extension:Widgets

Related discussion

 * Wikispaces-Refugees.groups.io