Wikispaces

Wikispaces was 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 closed 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

 * 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. Run it as the user running the Apache server on a machine with MediaWiki installed (typically the  user, probably not the   user), copy the   file 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.


 * The export functionality for Wikispaces supports MediaWiki as an output language. That results in a bunch of textfiles, plus images, plus discussions in some JSON format.
 * vermuz/wikimediawikiscripts is a Python script (written a couple years ago) to preprocess Wikispace export files so they can be mass-imported into MediaWiki. nanotube/wikispacestomediawiki (features) is a companion script that does markup conversion; unclear if it's better than getting the export in MediaWiki format in the first place.

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 , QualityBox

Feature matching
Wikimatrix comparison.


 * Features:
 * WYSIWYG editor -> Extension:VisualEditor
 * Picture and File Manager -> VisualEditor uploads?
 * Easy Linking -> VisualEditor / Extension:WikiEditor
 * Search -> built-in or Extension:CirrusSearch
 * File search:
 * Office files (MS/OoO) -> ???
 * PDF -> Extension:PdfHandler
 * 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
 * Collaborative learning features:
 * Projects -> ??? (SMW?)
 * Events -> SMW?
 * User creator -> ???
 * Assessment -> Extension:WatchAnalytics?
 * Annotations / inline commets -> not currently supported (T185607)
 * Discussions -> talk pages, Extension:CommentStreams
 * Statistics -> Extension:Google Analytics Integration or Extension:Piwik Integration?

Related discussion

 * Wikispaces-Refugees.groups.io
 * Reddit thread