On  July 31 your free Wikispaces site will be shut down. Have you taken any step to migrate to a new host? Here's the absolute minimum you must do to be able to make an exodus and you must start now! Why? Because there could be a mass exodus at the last minute and you may never get the backup export files you will need - even a few weeks ago, it was taking Wikispaces 2 days to execute a backup/export on my relatively small site and those attempts failed to include the Discussions.

The very least you should do is EXPORT! If you have not chosen a host, which format(s) should you export?

1. HTML because it is generally supported, works out-of-the-box and you can easily set up a public, read-only site for free (depending on total size). Things get more complicated if you need privacy but many systems will import HTML pages and convert them into their own syntax.
2. If you think you might go to a MediaWiki or DokuWiki host, you might export in that flavour although neither export is really directly compatible and either you or the hosting service will have to convert some things.

Communicate to your members while your Wikispaces site is still alive:

1. Download the membership directory. However, it does not export email addresses, so
2. Send a message in Wikispaces to all members telling them what you are doing and
   1. give them a non-volatile email address to which they can send a reply stating that they would like to be notified when the new site is up. Build up your email contacts list for that future message delivery.
   2. And/or set up a Facebook or other social group and invite them to join to stay abreast of the development of the replacement site
   3. And/or register a domain name and set up a basic website for status reporting; later you may be able to have this domain point to your permanent replacement.

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Tom
Looking to move SQLite Tools For RootsMagic from Wikispaces

On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 03:40 pm, Tom H wrote:

And/or register a domain name and set up a basic website for status reporting; later you may be able to have this domain point to your permanent replacement.

I should have added to this another step before shutdown and that is to redirect your Wikispaces site to your new domain. Wikispaces will provide domain redirection for your site until 1 Feb 2019. On the Settings page, select "Domain Redirect" from the side menu.

 

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Tom
Looking to move SQLite Tools For RootsMagic from Wikispaces

  Thanks for the reminder, Tom - I had forgotten all about this.

On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 10:44 am, Wendy Martens wrote:

I have multiple wikispaces and would like to test one of them for the domain redirect. I'm a little worried, however, when this notice comes up as part of the redirect; that there will be no access to any data stored in wikispaces. Is this the case for just the one wikispace site that I would like to redirect, or all of them?

I have no direct experience with it yet but my reading is that the Domain Redirect on one Wikispaces site will have no effect on your other sites and that the door is closed on your data in only the one.

 

I've also had issues with the transfer of content from wikispaces to mywikis. The mywikis site does not transfer content that links to microsoft word or ppt. In addition, there have been problems with the editing process on mywikis. While Jeffery is quick to respond, these issues keep happening. I've tried to be proactive because I use my wikispace content  a lot, but have yet to find a satisfactory solution that doesn't cost a significant amount in fees. I've also tried to transfer content to google sites, but again there are issues with links to word and ppt. 

I don't understand this issue. Presumably, the desired Word and PowerPoint files are exported by Wikispaces? Show us an example of a filename that has this issue.

I'm speculating that the filename contains a character that is substituted by something else in the import process, thus resulting in a broken link. For example, a link to "my file.docx" has to be changed to "my%20file.docx" for a HTML URL and that would work without changing the file's name. WordPress would change both to "my-file.docx". I think MediaWiki and DokuWiki also require both to be changed like WordPress does and the characters also must be lower-cased. If the process that changes the hyperlink does the changes differently from the one that changes the filename, then the results are out of sync and you get a broken link. Wikispaces does a good job with the hyperlinks in the HTML export that makes it suitable for direct upload to a HTML website without modification of either filenames or links but, last I looked, all other exports require much link and filename processing by the importer.  That is something that MyWikis, CiviHosting and EditMe all do for you but it's possible that their procedures don't cover all possible cases and (some of?) your files are outliers.

OTOH, if all your ppt and docx files have the issue, is it possible that you have one consistent outlier character in the name? Otherwise, the issue must be with the filetype. My recollection from years ago is that the server must have a registered mimetype for each filename extension that informs the browser what to do when hyperlinked to a file. Your host should be able to add the appropriate mimetypes for these file types.

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Tom
Looking to move SQLite Tools For RootsMagic from Wikispaces