Help:Renaming

Rename button

There are a number of scenarios within Saintapedia where it may be necessary to rename a page. If you want change your username, see How to change your username.

Basic renaming is sometimes required when Saintapedians do not follow Saintapedia's naming convention, when there is a typo, or there is some other similar anomaly. Saintapedia offers a simple and elegant tool for effectively renaming a page under these scenarios and it is the "move" option. Find this option by mousing over the little down arrow just to the left of the search box. When using the "move" tab, the software does a number of things in the background to help ensure all information stays connected together and the history of the article is not lost. These actions include:

1. The discussion page is moved and renamed with the main article page
2. The history of both the article page and the discussion page are moved to the new name
3. A redirect is created so that anything that was linking to the old page will now link to the new page.

See below for additional "cleanup" steps you should take after moving a page.

Changes in the real world

Even when the best practices are used to create good, long-lasting article titles, a changing world can often require a page to be renamed. Deciding how to reflect this change in Saintapedia can be confusing when there is a robust page that already exists.

There are two basic options to follow. Option 1 is the most likely option to follow in the majority of circumstances

Option 1

In most cases, the best approach will be to NOT rename the existing page but rather create a new page that speaks to the issue in its new form. In these cases, a new section should be created in the existing article that summarizes the new article. Just underneath the section head, add the {{Main}} template and link it to the new article. You may still want to follow the cleaup steps below to see if there are links to the existing page that should now point to the new page instead.

Each template should have a list of parameters that can tailor this banner to be more useful to the reader. If using VisualEditor, when adding a template, the Template Data forms should help adding the available parameters.

Option 2

This option is most applicable when something like a project is renamed but all other aspects of the project remain the same. The longer a given name has been in use, the less appropriate this option becomes.

1. Move the page to the new name
2. Create a history section within the article to describe the world before the change or find some way within the narrative to capture the before and after nature of the move.
3. Follow the cleanup steps below

How to rename an article

• Make sure you are signed into Saintapedia
• Go to the article you wish to rename
• Hover your cursor over the down arrow next to the search box
• Select Move
  
• Give the article its new name in the new title field
  
• Add the reason why you are renaming the article
• Click Move page
• Please see the final cleanup section below.

A redirect will be created pointing anyone who goes to the previous URL to the new URL for the page.

Cleanup

After you have moved the page to its new name, it is good wiki etiquette to do some gardening of the connections to the article. Please consider completing the following steps

1. Use the "what links here" option in the "toolbox" (below the search window) to see what is linking to the page. Especially look for pages that now link via a "double redirect", which is a page that redirects to a redirect that links to page.
2. Another way to find double redirects is through the double redirects tool that is available from Special Pages to find and fix any redirects and update them to reflect the new location.

Renaming files

Renaming files does not work as cleanly and easily as renaming articles. We recommend you carefully consider your file name when uploading a document.

Don't have the ability

The ability to rename files has been limited to a few individuals and should be mostly done to bring files into conformance with the File naming conventions.

If you do not have the ability to rename files, edit the page for the file to add {{Rename | NewName=<proposed new filename>}} to flag that the file needs to be renamed and indicate what you would like to rename the file to.

If you do have the ability to rename files, when renaming a file, a redirect is automatically created to send any links to the old file name over to the new name. However, the {{PDFLink}} and templates ignore the redirects; for these types of files you will typically cause the links to break when you rename a file. So it is best to fix each link to the old filename at the same time as you rename the file, so the redirect isn't needed. One way to do this is as follows:

• On the Saintapedia page for the file, near the bottom is a list of pages that link to the file. Open a new tab for each of the pages.
  • If your mouse has a wheel, you may be able to open these new tabs by pointing your mouse at the link and clicking the mouse wheel. Or your mouse may have a separate button for opening links in a new tab.
  • Otherwise, right click on each link and select "Open in New Tab".
• On the file page, click the triangle to the right of the Read, Edit, View History, and Star (watch) tabs, and select Move.
• Enter a new filename that is more complete and consistent with the file naming convention and an explanation that you are renaming the file to be more descriptive, but do not click the "Move Page" button yet.
• Select the new filename you typed, and press Ctrl-C for copy.
• Go to each of the pages in the other tabs you opened, edit them, find the reference to the old file name, and paste in the new name.
• In the edit summary box, explain that you are changing the link to reflect the new filename, and select the "This is a minor edit" checkbox. Do not click Save page yet.
  • Note that links in square brackets, such as image links, should include "File:" at the beginning of the filename.
  • Links using the {{PDFLink}} or templates, by contrast, should not have "File:" at the beginning.
• Once you have changed every page that references the file, go back to the Move File tab, and click the "Move Page" button.
• Then go to each of the tabs for pages that link to the file, and click the "Save page" button.
  • You may want to first click the "Show preview" button to make sure the link works.
  • Note that the link will not work in the Preview until after you've clicked the "Move Page" button on the Move File tab.

Following all of these steps in this order helps minimize the amount of time that links are potentially broken after renaming a file.

Username

Please contact TBD if you would like to have your username changed. They will use Special:RenameUser to make the change.

Troubleshooting

• If you are trying to a rename a page and there already exists a page with the name you would like to use, there are a few options:
  • If you change the desired name page to a redirect to the current title, you can rename the current title to the desired name.
  • If the desired name is a redirect to the current title, there are two options
    1. [Not ideal because the article history is not preserved] Move the contents of the existing page to the page with the desired name. Then turn the existing page into a redirect of the desired name.
  • If there are two different subjects with the same natural title consider the following steps:
    1. Renaming the natural title with some sort of differentiator
    2. Rename the page that you wish to have the same natural title
    3. Change the natural title into a Disambiguation page pointing to the page you just renamed and include links to both the the two pages. This will ensure that the contents is findable in Search and when linking to the various pages.

Admins will get the message "The destination page "target page name" already exists. Do you want to delete it to make way for the move?"

Related

• Help:Redirect
• Saintapedia:Naming convention
• Special:RenameUser