User blog:Amelia Lonelyheart/AWB basic guide

Intended for Prom, but hopefully useful for anyone who stumbles on this.

What is AWB? AWB is short for Auto Wiki Browser, a piece of external software used to make editing MediaWiki sites easier and quicker. It is not a script or bot but software one has to download themselves.

More information can be found here on wikipedia: AutoWikiBrowser and it ca be downloaded here on Scourgeforge: here.

Step #1: Project and site
Upon loading up AWB, go to Options > Preferences and then go to the tab that says "Site"



Under project, select the project you want. In the case of the wikia, go to "wikia" and input vsbattles in the box.

From there, go to File > Log In/Profiles and use your Wikia log in. Note for other projects you'll have to use your log in information there.



If you get an error message then you're not authorized to use AWB. It shoud redirect you to a list of authorized users. Simply add yourself to the list and retry.



On the off chance it doesn't, simply paste "AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage" in the URL within the project namespace. In the context of VBW, it would be the following:

http://vsbattles.wikia.com/wiki/VS_Battles_Wiki:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage


 * Note: Not sure how this affects communities that don't have that page. For example, neither this wiki nor Equestripedia have such a page, yet AWB works just fine on the latter.

If you're logged in, then your username should be green in the bottom corner as seen here.

Step #2: Making lists
Now that you're logged in, you have the ability to "make lists". Essentially these are a list of pages, files, modules, templates and potentially threads* that you can edit.

* However each post in a thread is its own separate page so it's not practical



I wont list every list making method because frankly I don't know how most of them work, but I'll list the ones I'e used a lot.
 * Source: Category
 * Self-explanatory. It loads every page with the category of choice. Note that this also includes transcluded categories, but it cannot remove transcluded categories for fairly obvious reasons.


 * Source: Categories on page
 * This loads all categories that appear on certain pages. Useful for mass editing certain categories, though quite situational.


 * Source: New pages
 * Creates a list based around new pages Not sure what the parameters of what it considers a "new page" is as on Equestripedia it list over 600 pages


 * Source: What links here
 * Makes a list for pages that link to a certain page. Useful for clearing red links generated by a deleted page


 * Source: What Redirects here
 * Self-explanatory. Good for clearing up clog


 * Source: What transcludes page
 * Essentially the same as "What links here" but for templates.


 * Wiki search
 * Self-explanatory. Not sure i it works on projects with custom searches however.

Step #3: Find and replace
The most basic and alluring feature of AWB is the "Find and replace" feature.

Make sure "Find and replace" is checked and then click on "Normal settings".



Essentially how it works is this: You put the text you want to replace in the "Find" field and what you want to replace it with in the "Replace with" field. Note that you should be precise and specific with your text as to not create problems with page structure. A good understanding of wiki code should be learned before using this software.

Once you find the text you want to replace (links, templates, terminology, etc), go to the "start" tab. Click on the "Start" button above the "stop" button.



High lighted text on the west side of the screen (the orangey-tan color) is the text that is to be replaced with the blue highlighted text. Study this screen to make sure you don't make any mistakes. In the "Edit Box" screen, you can manually edit stuff in case AWB tries to "fix" something by itself. Once you're sure the edit is fine, click "Save". Check the page history or Recent Changes to make sure it went through.



To be safe, you may want to uncheck "Apply general fixes" in the "Options" tab (same tab as "Find and replace", not the toolbar). While the fixes are nice, they can sometimes override design elements of your wiki. For example, they interfere with some archaic page tab templates that some wikis use (like Wikipedia) which can cause some problems. Alternatively you can enable it but be very careful you don't break anything.

Step #4: Other
If you press "F12", then you'll unlock a toolbar at the top. This toolbar doesn't unlock any ability not already usable in the start screen, but makes stuff a little quicker. The toolbar offers: Most of these should be self-explanatory. You can also load in plugins but I have never doneso.
 * Start for quicker processing
 * A full stop
 * Preview
 * A diff page
 * Save
 * Skip
 * Delete

Well, I think that's everything.