Manual:Importing Wikipedia infoboxes tutorial

Note: This tutorial is not for novice users. Importing templates into your third-party wiki from Wikipedia is often times a lengthy and challenging process. Some of Wikipedia's templates require multiple layers of underlying "support" or "utility" templates. You may have to repeat the export/import process several times. The instructions have not had substantial updates since 2016, and much has changed since, so expect problems with these.

This tutorial outlines steps to import infoboxes used by English Wikipedia.

Prerequisites

Before using this tutorial, you should familiarize yourself with the MediaWiki features it will be utilizing:

You must also have these extensions installed, set up and working:

Preparation

CSS

Either manually create or Export/Import the CSS from the source wiki; e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css.
(this is optional; importing may be necessary to properly display some templates).

Note: This is required for most infobox templates, including the base infobox template itself. Use Ctrl+F to help you search.

JS

Either manually create or Export/Import the JS from the source wiki; e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js.
(this is optional; importing may be necessary for some template functionality).

Extensions

required

Extension:ParserFunctions
Extension:Scribunto
Extension:Wikibase (some but not all templates need this)
Extension:TemplateStyles

recommended

Extension:InputBox
Extension:TemplateData
Extension:JsonConfig#Supporting_Wikimedia_templates - Some templates need this.

Commons Templates

if copying templates from commons, either Special:Export/Special:Import these pages or create them manually in your local wiki:

Steps

Step 1: Determine info boxes needed

Find all infoboxes used on English Wikipedia at w:Category:Infobox templates
If there's an info box being used in an article you'd like to import:
- Visit the page's edit screen
- Scroll to the bottom and find the appropriate page name for the infobox template you'd like to import

Step 2: Export Wikipedia templates

Go to English Wikipedia's Special:Export page and enter the full page names of the infobox templates from step 1.
For your first infobox to work, you'll also need to include the master infobox template, Template:Infobox
Be sure to check the Include templates checkbox to include other necessary templates
Note that required templates may also include Scribunto modules in the module namespace
Most templates put their documentation in a subpage, so you may want to include /doc subpage for each template you're importing
- Example: for Template:Infobox you should also download Template:Infobox/doc

Step 3: Export Wikipedia Modules

Many of the templates used in Wikipedia, especially the collapsible navigation templates, utilize Scribunto. Without these modules installed, the templates will produce Lua error messages. Please expand the list below of modules required for infoboxes that are needed.

The following is a list of at least some modules that you should export from English Wikipedia to an XML file. Just cut and paste this list into the list of files to be exported:

w:Module:InfoboxImage

w:Module:Check_for_unknown_parameters

w:Module:If_empty

Step 4: Import infobox templates and Modules

Go to your wiki's Special:Import page and select the file you created from the export in step 2.

The modules you exported in step 3 will NOT import correctly unless you first have successfully installed Scribunto, which will create the namespace for "modules." After Scribunto is installed, the modules should import properly. Afterward, if you see templates that give a lua error message, try to identify the missing module that must be imported.
Since many templates incorporate images, it is helpful to modify LocalSettings.php to allow instant commons import of images:
```
$wgUseInstantCommons = true;
```

Step 5: De-Wikipediaify

You may want to review all of the files that you just imported for references to Wikipedia pages.
You can certainly leave them in place - and are encouraged to update them as links to the appropriate Wikipedia article (possibly using interwiki links)
Pay special attention to categories, which may be buried in the template's code, and may include reference to Wikipedia
- Again, you can leave them, but you may wish to update them to your wiki's name or categorization policy

Step 6: Additional templates needed

Once your import is complete, you should check the template on your wiki to see if it functions correctly
A helpful step is to once again refer to the edit page's templates list
- If there are redlinks, go back to step 2 and repeat this process to import the missing templates

Step 7: Enjoy success

That's it! Enjoy your infoboxes!