Forum:Should WoWWiki leave Wikia?

Forums: Village pump → Should WoWWiki leave Wikia?

On IRC we've been bouncing around the idea (for awhile) of leaving Wikia, checking out options, etc... Wikia plans to move us to a new skin in October (phasing out the old Monaco skin) and has already enacted rules limiting customization. Sadly, this leaves little control in the hands of WoWWiki users and admins to make the wiki look like WoWWiki always has and to maintain it in a way that reflect's WoWWiki's own interests. WoWWiki (and myself personally) have nothing against progress or change, but sadly the "new" look is not conducive to the wiki experience (you can see examples if you would like on other Wikia wikis) - the focus is on getting traffic to other Wikia wikis.

In any case, I feel strongly that we need to investigate our options and see if there is another choice. One problem is getting Wikia to let go of the WoWWiki domain name - they own it and may be reluctant to let it go. Most importantly, I want to make sure we have consensus on this; if we "move" the wiki to another host Wikia policy is to continue it on their own servers, so if we move without getting consensus there will be a split involved in the userbase.

Anyway, I would like comments on this. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:10, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

I've been firing off emails of my own in preparation for this forum post (rather, the one I was planning on posting a week from now once more people had a chance to see the new skin)... The new ToU has decidedly pushed me away from the "let's see if we can fix it" stance I've attempted to carry until now. I'm nearly ready to fork at this point, to be quite honest.

I hardly expect wikia's going to give up the wowwiki.com domain -- we're 10% of their global page views! They would much rather we fork and split contributors than completely move away so that they can still have some ad impressions. (look at tfwiki vs transformers.wikia). Instead I've been trying to come up with a new domain name we can use that'll forward wherever the new wiki ends up.

Anyway, the skin still is beta and I'm going to try to hold out hope for sanity from wikia for another week or two before I start pushing my hosting proposals along. --k_d³ 00:22, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Well, if you want to pay for it - and preserve the whole database (all 87,000 articles of it, lol) - be my guest...but if it's a matter of looks, I honestly don't see a problem. As long as we can still read it, and still edit it...then does it matter? --Joshmaul (talk) 00:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

The main problem outside of appearance is navigation is going to suck. I'm on the new skin right now and basically the only way to get around is to type in the URLs. The search box doesn't even show up the whole time. Plus, if we want a change, we're at Wikia's mercy - we can't change most things on the interface now. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:33, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Hmm...I see where that would be a problem. And I apologize if my previous comment came across as rude - didn't mean to be so. I didn't see any other problem besides the potential for getting the crappy white Wikia backgrounds. *chuckles* --Joshmaul (talk) 01:44, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry, I asked for comments. Anyway, next week you'll be able to try it for yourself on WoWWiki, but I wanted to get the ball rolling ASAP. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 01:47, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

I am slightly more optimistic about retaining the domain name, though only about || this much. wowwiki.net essentially looks available if we really have to go that route (having a looksee at godaddy), and I think that would be a more appropriate TLD anyway, given our content.

My question is: Where do we go? We have too many hits to just walk up to any old random provider and say "gief bandwidth". If we do, who knows how much in the necessary fees we'll need to come with? Who, of us, have the money? I don't expect much help from the community, but maybe I'm being doom-and-gloomy. Going the other way and finding us a random provider that would take us in for free, what will we pay for in advertisements?...

Then, of course, there's the route of "approach these companies which are familiar to the WoW crowd", which kd3 hints at [perhaps admins could get a summary via the email list about what exactly he's been emailing around about?], as well as those tossings around on IRC. I'm most favorable to this option as I know a few here who have previously discussed it are as well, but who would do so? We usually end up with "not a one", but we haven't really contacted (m)any of them...

Yeah, this looks bleak to me. But I'm tired and stressed with schoolwork. --Sky (t · c) 04:10, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

If there's an issue about money, I would be able to help. But we'll see how this progresses, and how much it'll cost in the end. --g0urra[T҂C] 06:06, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

I'll be sending a heads-up to the sysop list once I'm done with school today (9-10 hours from now). --k_d³ 17:17, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I spent some time today customizing the new WoWWiki skin (it's a work in progress), and this is how the main page looks:

• 

I should note, improvements should be coming to reduce the height of the top areas, and exact colours are easily tweaked (e.g. making the buttons more "gold"). Kirkburn  talk  contr 19:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Domain name

So, if we do fork, there's no way wikia's going to sell us (our new host) the wowwiki.com domain. So, short of going to "wowwiki.net", which would be kinda shady in most users' (and google's!) eyes... what else could we use? --k_d³ 21:50, September 29, 2010 (UTC)