Creating a Wikia

While not exactly related to building your website, making a Wikia is something that many of us have done for the promotion of their forum or as in my case is trying to do. I use the word trying figuratively. I'm like Jack O'Neill, I can navigate my way around the galaxy, but I'm lost in DC. For me, I can do the rudimentary things, but that's it; I'm totally run aground as far as sorting it out, making it look nice and cohesive, professional looking. Any help in this area I would be so grateful for.

 

Thanks for asking... :P

 

I wanted to put it out everywhere Cyn. Getting help from different quarters so to speak, since I'm totally useless with this stuff myself.

 

The skin/theme thing I did, unless of course I can customise it some more (it doesn't look pretty at all). What I don't know how to do is to organise the data so it makes sense. Put things in order and so on. Even my posts look wonko, and putting pics in is a nightmare even just to edit. In a word, I'm lost

 

I can probably customize both, Rogue. All you needed to do was ask. I know wiki. It's not just "I'll learn." I've worked with wikia for years.

 

Awww thank you Cyn. You know why I never asked? Cos you're doing so much for me already, I didn't want to burden you. You are so super you know that.

 

I don't know much about wikia (never bothered to use them). When I was getting into working with wikis I started off with Dokuwiki. From there I got a free host (x10hosting then later 000webhost) to run my wiki. (Those only lasted like 3 months each as neither host was any good. More downtime than up, constant resource limit hit issues, resource limit not resetting, denying legitimate users access, little support, etc...)

But in terms of organization for a wiki...
I always like to go with my starting page (start/index/whatever it's called) and have that link to major categories. Then I'd set my category home pages like:
- Rules/guidelines (or any OOC info that needs to be mentioned)
- NPCs
- Player characters
- World History
- Lore

Then in each of them I'd have links to the various relevant things. So for lore, using Marvel for example, I'd have pages for:
- Races (if a fantasy setting or one that has different species, EX- Human, Android, Kree, Skrull, etc...)
- Major groups (EX- Shield, Hydra, etc...)
- Important individuals (Not necessarily NPCs, these may have been people who are important to know the story of the game but who aren't around. Like Howard Stark or Dr. Erskeine.)
- Locations
- Technology/Magic (a section for the tech/magic so people know what kinds of unique things to expect and roughly how they work. I don't mean for things like a cellphone, but for things like Black Widow's Venom Bolt launchers.)

The player section would be divided by faction and there'd be a default template for each one to fill out.

 

I will be doing similar for my RPG section. That though will be towards the end of my wikia, as my forum is not only for role play. I have now 6 rpgs active on the forum, so that section is going to be largish.

 

The beauty is though that you can adapt it... So you can make a main/index page that then links to each of the roleplays (which then follow the structure I've mentioned). Plus you could also have a section for common elements that maybe all sections share. So if some of them were set in the same universe you could define things once then not have to duplicate pages for each game.

 

I'll get things sorted out in the order I need, then I'll have a look at it. Thanks for the info Zero. Cool stuff!

 

What advantages are there to using Wikia versus hosting your own wiki? I opted to go with a self-hosted DokuWiki because I wanted full control over my content.

 

Audience. Wikia generates millions of hits and looks. Simple names googled will bring up Wikia titles in a instant. Google Stargate, you'll get dozens of Wikia links

 

Wikia might get hits, but will that actually translate into any for your site? I mean if it's any more than 1-2 links in then it probably won't make enough of a difference to bother with. (I mean it's like with Google search results, if you're not on the first page you pretty much don't exist to most people.) But either way just be careful. They like to lay claim to anything you put up. So be really wary of any original content.

Personally though, especially if you are intending to post original content, I think you should use a self-hosted wiki. Especially since you're self-hosted SMF anyway and you could probably find a bridge so that users can sign into your wiki with their forum accounts. (This way everything is stored on your server, you can easily backup/restore it, you can install extra plugins/features if you want, members can easily access it with their forum accounts, etc...)

 

I'm actually on the verge of changing my mind completely. I've been talking to some friends about creating a website type magazine. One of my closest friends does this for her diet and exercise blogs, she has over 100k readers in just 3 months.

 

a big thing with the wiki's is to keep all hte pages looking like the same person did them all. and that gets a bit difficult if more than one person is doing them. I recently had to restart my wiki from the begining.

 

Yep that can be a problem. I am letting one of my admins handle most of it, with a little input from moi....which reminds me....

 

Just as an addition to this thread, Wikia (now Fandom.com) tends to be heavily bloated with advertisements and unwanted content being generated on its pages, aside from just being generally difficult to fully customize.

If anyone is looking to host a wiki for their game or really for any reason in general, I would recommend checking out Miraheze. Miraheze is a non-profit wiki-hosting site which lets anyone make their own wiki completely for free, no ads. Wikis hosted on Miraheze can be customized extensively with various skins and provide a wealth of configuration options.

 

Thank you so much for that information. I will certainly take a look into it.

 

Apparently Miraheze is struggling to survive?

See: https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Miraheze_is_Not_Shutting_Down

Hopefully they will be successful.