Edit

Edited by Jack Herrick, Josh W., Krystle C., Ben Rubenstein and 17 others

When merging two wikiHow pages, the recommended approach is to do a standard merge where you move content from one page to the other and create a redirect between them. Occasionally, however, you need to merge a well-established page, in which case you'd want to preserve the page history of both articles. This is done rarely but if needed, the instructions are provided below. Full administrator status is necessary to perform all of these commands.

Edit Steps

  1. 1
    Use the advanced technique only if:
    • the article you're merging was featured at one point (check the discussion page)
    • it is a very popular and thorough article (over 50,000 page views and in-depth instructions)
    • the article was donated by a third party (e.g. VideoJug, Wired Magazine, Family Handyman, etc.)
    • the article has a very long edit history (over a year old, more than 10 contributors, etc.)
  2. 2
    Identify the two pages to be merged. For simplicity let's call them "Merge Target" and "Merge Source". "Merge Target" will become the final name of the page.
  3. 3
    Determine which page will become the Merge Target by selecting the page with the shorter, simpler name that more people will search for. When in doubt choose the article which has more page views since that one may be linked more frequently on other websites.
  4. 4
    Move all of the good ideas from Merge Source into Merge Target (what you want the name to be). Edit Merge Target just as you would a regular article.
  5. 5
    Find all of the articles that link to the Merge Source.(Toolbox: "What Links Here"). Change the link on those articles to point to the Merge Target.
  6. 6
    Delete "Merge Target"
  7. 7
    Move "Merge Source" to the "Merge Target" (the one you just deleted) name. (Toolbox: "Move this Page")(Make sure you type the Target name exactly. Easiest way to do this is to use your cursor to copy and paste the article title, omitting the words "how to".)
  8. 8
    Undelete "Merge Target" by typing 
    http://www.wikihow.com/Special:Undelete/Merge-Target
    except with the "Merge Target" replaced with the title of the article you deleted.
  9. 9
    Make sure you select the correct version out of the list! The correct version is the one you want to keep, the Merge Target, the article you deleted and undeleted.
  10. 10
    Click Restore at the bottom of the page.
  11. 11
    Confirm that the page and page history of the new page now contain the authors of all previous versions of both pages and the content shows as you wanted it.

Edit Tips

Edit Warnings

  • Always use the advanced editor rather than the guided editor to do a Q&D merge. If you use the guided editor the category information could still be on the page which will cause the page to continue appearing the category system which is confusing.

Edit Things You'll Need

  • Administrator status (for full merges)

Edit Related wikiHows

Article Info

Categories: Merging

Recent edits by: Karin, Milind, Peter

Share this Article:

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 6,411 times.

Was this article accurate?

Yes No


x

Thank Our Volunteer Authors.

Follow us on Google+