This page is describes the installation process for Windows devices, step by step. It is therefore of course written from the perspective of a Windows user. However, much of the advice on this page could be applied to users of other operating systems as well. Almost every user will benefit from watching the video below, as it mostly details setup of pywikipedia, most of whose steps apply equally to all operating systems.
Step zero
Install Python on your machine.
Step one
Click here to download the Compat version of PWB (this link will begin the download.)
Once downloaded, extract the contents to somewhere that will be easy to navigate to through the command prompt. The best way to do this is extracting it directly into your C:/ drive. You might find it helpful to move the subfolder of "compat" called "pywikipedia" directly to C:/, and delete the now-empty "compat" folder.
Step two
Generating family files
Open your command prompt and type in the following command:
After inputting that command, insert the long URL for the wiki on which you wish to run your bot:
Next, enter a short name for the wiki:
This will begin the creation of the family file for the wiki you entered above.
Generating user files
It will ask if you would like to generate both a user-config file and a user_fixes file. Type in "3", and press enter.
Next, it will ask you which MediaWiki site you would like to use this bot on. Type in "34", and press enter. This will select Wikia.
Next, you will be asked for the language code for the site. There should be only one option here, so just go ahead and press enter.
Enter your username:
Next, it will ask which variant of user-config you would like to use. Type in "s" and press enter.
This will create the user-config and the user_fixes files.
Step three
Now you must allow your bot to edit on the chosen wiki. To do this, open up your user-config file using your favourite text editor.
Find where it says "family = 'wikia'" and change "wikia" to the shortname of the wiki that you entered when you generated the family file:
- "family = 'example_wikia'"
Next, find the line that looks like this: "usernames['wikia']['en'] = u'ExampleBot'". Correct if necessary to your bot's name.
Find where it says "usernames['wikia']['en']" and change it to:
"usernames['example_wikia']['en']"
Save the file.
Step four
Now you must tell the software to connect to FANDOM using SSL. Not doing so will prevent the bot from logging in.
To do so, find and open the file named config.py
using your favourite text editor. Then, find the line that says SSL_connection = False
and change it to SSL_connection = True
. Then, save the file.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed the Python Wikipedia Bot on your computer! Now to begin editing using your newly created bot, type in python login.py and type in your bot's password. (The password will be hidden by default, so don't freak out when you don't see it.)