App/Personal wikis/New wiki

Domain name

The domain name is a unique id to your wiki within the XOWA app. As reference, English Wikipedia has a domain name of en.wikipedia.org.

Here are some guidelines:

• A domain name should be short. The maximum length is 64 characters.
• A domain name can only consist of alphanumeric characters, a dot, or a dash.
  • If a dash is present, it cannot be at the start or the end of the domain.
    • For example, the following is invalid: -en.wikipedia.org-.
    • For another example, the following is valid: en.wikipedia.org.2016-12.
• A domain name should be unique. Uniqueness is important if you ever share your wiki with anyone else. If you name your wiki notes, and someone else names their wiki notes then XOWA won't be able to use both wikis at once.
• A domain name should look like a regular url. Although XOWA is meant for offline environments, it does have a HTML dump feature^[1]. Using a regular domain name will make any future transition to online publishing easier.
• A domain name cannot be changed after the wiki is created. Please choose the domain name carefully.

Name

The name is a freeform text name used to identify your wiki. Currently, it's only being used on Special:XowaWikiDirectory, but it will be used more elsewhere.

The name only has a limitation of 255 characters or less.

Folder

The folder is where your wiki is located. XOWA saves all data in one .xowa file^[2], but it needs to assign a folder to a wiki to generate other temporary data.

When creating a wiki, XOWA will create the folder if it doesn't exist.

When editing a wiki, changing the folder requires extra steps.

For example, consider a wiki which was created with a folder of C:\old\wiki.me.org and should be moved to a folder called C:\new\wiki.me.org

• Close all tabs that have pages from wiki.me.org
• Close XOWA
• Move the file manually from C:\old\wiki.me.org\wiki.me.org.xowa to C:\new\wiki.me.org\wiki.me.org.xowa
• Open XOWA
• From the main menu, do Personal wikis -> Personal wiki list
• Click the wrench icon next on the same row as the moved wiki
• Enter in C:\new\wiki.me.org\wiki.me.org.xowa
• Press the Save button

Main Page

The Main Page is the default start page for your wiki.

• XOWA will creating this page after your wiki is created.
• The Main Page is also the default page when using just the url. For example, entering in en.wikipedia.org in the url bar will automatically navigate to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
• The Main Page should follow standard conventions for page titles. As a brief overview:
  • Alphanumeric characters are fine
  • Spaces are fine
  • Try not to use colons. They can be mistaken for namespaces
  • Try not to use punctuation. Some are invalid (For example: <). For more info, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Page_name#Technical_restrictions_and_limitations
• The Main Page cannot be changed after the wiki is created. Please choose the domain name carefully.

Notes

1. ^ This is how http://xowa.org is generated
2. ^ A .xowa file is just a .sqlite3 file. Only the extension is different; everything else is the same.