App/Import/Other wikis
Overview
Other Wikipedias will follow the same process as setting up Simple Wikipedia or English Wikipedia. The steps are summarized below, but you should read both Help:Set up Simple Wikipedia and Help:Set up English Wikipedia
Note that some Wikipedias will require a lot of disk space. For example, German Wikipeda requires at least 40 GB. Depending on your location it may take several hours to download that much data. Please prepare accordingly.
Part 1: Set up the wiki
The first part is to set up the wiki. The set-up process involves the following steps:
- XOWA will download the database dump from the Wikimedia backup servers
- The database dump will be multiple GBs and take several hours to download
- XOWA will take about an hour to build the wiki and produce a wiki 2 times the dump size. For example, German Wikipedia's dump is currently about 3 GB, so XOWA will generate a 6 GB wiki
To begin the process, do the following
- Launch XOWA
- Use the menu bar and select Tools -> Import From List.
- Find your wiki's name in the list.
- Click on the "download" link to the left.
The import process will start. When it's done, it will automatically load the Main Page.
Part 2: Download the images
This part usually takes much longer to complete. It will require many GB of disk space and many hours of download time. For example, German Wikipedia takes up 32 GB and may take 16 hours to download.
When you're ready to start, do the following:
- Go to the download page
- Find your wiki in the list and click on the link
- Download the files from archive.org.
- Unzip the files in your xowa root directory. When you are done, you will have a file called C:\xowa\wiki\de.wikipedia.org\de.wikipedia.org-file-ns.000-db.001.xowa as well as many others.
- Launch XOWA
- Enter "home/wiki/Help:Options/Files" into the address bar.
- Make sure "Retrieval enabled" is checked.
- Visit any page. All the images for this page will load.
Updating the wiki
If you want to update your wiki, you won't have to repeat the whole process.
- If you update your wiki, you do not have to update the images. The two are independent of each other. Note that a later wiki dump may cite images not in the current XOWA image dump. These images won't show until you download the latest monthly update.
- XOWA will update images every few months. If you would like an update earlier, please post at https://sourceforge.net/p/xowa/discussion/general/thread/67c4cdb5/