FAQ

Table of Contents What is the purpose of this project? What do a wiki backup contain? What is the license of the texts and the files contained in the backups? I am a wiki administrator with shell access. How can I backup my wiki? I am a wiki user. How can I backup a single article? I am a wiki user. How can I backup the entire wiki? What is that .7z format? Why do you use it? How can I import a XML dump? I would like to help you. How can I do it? Can I download a Wikipedia/Wikia backup?

What is the purpose of this project?

There are thousands of wikis in the Internet. Everyday a few of them are lost, due to lack of backups. People download tons of films and music. Wikis, most of them published under free licenses, disappear from time to time because nobody grabbed a copy of them. That is a shame.

What do a wiki backup contain?

A wiki backup (and those in the Available Backups page) contain the text of the wikis and/or their images. Passwords or user accounts related information are NOT included. Read about the license of these materials below.

What is the license of the texts and the files contained in the backups?

Every wiki has its own license.

Usually, wikis use free licenses like Creative Commons or GFDL, but some wikis may have non-free content. For an exact answer, you must visit the wiki site and check the license (probably, at the bottom of the wiki page).

The licenses of the images are a bit more complex. Every image may have a different license. Again, check the wiki and/or every .desc file inside the "images" directory in the backup. If the uploader did it correctly, the ".desc" file must contain the author, date, and license details of the image.

I am a wiki administrator with shell access. How can I backup my wiki?

You can use dumpBackup.php, a script available in every MediaWiki installation.

I am a wiki user. How can I backup a single article?

You can use Special:Export. There is an advanced guide too.

I am a wiki user. How can I backup the entire wiki?

You can use Special:Export over all the pages or use our backup generation tool (dumpgenerator.py).

For more information, please read our Tutorial.

What is that .7z format? Why do you use it?

7z is a compressed archive file format. I use it because it is free (GPL) and it has a high compression ratio. Read about it in Wikipedia. There are software for Windows and GNU/Linux (sudo apt-get install p7zip).

How can I import a XML dump?

Use the importDump.php. Read Manual:Importing XML dumps.

I would like to help you. How can I do it?

You can help reporting broken links, bugs, new wikis or making suggestions. Thanks.

Can I download a Wikipedia/Wikia backup?

Yes, you can. Wikimedia Foundation publishes dumps from time to time, so you don't need to use our tools. Follow this link http://dumps.wikimedia.org. Read this guide too (it includes details about Wikipedia offline readers).

Some other projects publish their backups too (although most of them publish only text, no images): Citizendium, Gentoo Linux Wiki, OmegaWiki, OSDev, Wikia, WikiFur, Wikivoyage.

If a project publishes dumps, you don't have to use dumpgenerator.py. Just download the dumps they offer, handy or using our download managers (see below).

New! We have developed Wikipedia/Wikia download managers. See wikipediadownloader.py and wikiadownloader.py.