Forum:Duplicating/copying histories

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I want to move an article to a new name to maintain it's history (it's an infobox) (moving it because we're going to develop it outside of usage in the main wiki), but I also need to revert it back to the edits prior to the changes (as it's a infobox and there are hundreds of articles linking to it). So...how do I do this, or is there a way to do this so I've got the new renamed page with its history, but also the original page with the history as well? Thanks. --Tangerineduel 14:53, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Use Special:Export, it will give you an XML file. Edit the part about the name of the page, then use Special:Import.

I've never done that, but it seems logical to do that way. — TulipVorlax 16:43, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Tangerineduel, leave the old Infobox where it is (e.g. PageA). Start a new page (e.g. PageB) to develop your infobox. When you are ready to deploy, delete PageA, move PageB to PageA, then restore the deleted revisions. The history will then encompass both the PageA and PageB edits in chronological order. --◄mendel► 19:35, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

This is how to fusion histories, not how to have two differents pages with same history, no ? — TulipVorlax 22:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I took the request to be for a solution for that: to develop a template "outside", then update the template with the full history of the edits that were made in development. If that was not the intention, I apologize. --◄mendel► 11:01, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks TulipVorlax, that looks like the way I'll go. Just looking through the XML file I couldn't really see where the page's history lurks, the XML just looks like the whole page (or is there something I'm not seeing in TextEdit?) (I'll give it a go in any case)

Thanks ◄mendel► I had considered that method, but we need PageA's history in order to develop PageB and PageB may never be deployed it may be a kick off point for other work, but we'd need to be able to see the whole length of the history. --Tangerineduel 13:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Be sure to exmaine the checkboxes on Special:Export, you can just export the current version, or the whole history; the history stores every version of the page in the XML. --◄mendel► 13:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Double checked the export and imported with no trouble (except it taking a while to import). Thanks for all the help. --Tangerineduel 14:09, 9 July 2009 (UTC)