Domain names of MicroWiki
The domain name of the website for the online micronational encyclopaedia and wiki MicroWiki is micronations.wiki. Adopted on 21 October 2016, MicroWiki has had five previous domains, with micronations.wiki being adopted due to complications with the previous domain host. According to the MicroWiki administration, the domain costs £160 ($191) annually. micronations.wiki redirects to the main page of MicroWiki at micronations.wiki/wiki/Main_Page. According to co-owner Karl Friedrich, the domain has exceptional search engine optimisation as "micronations" and "micronations wiki" are common search terms. MicroWiki's servers are hosted in Europe by Linode.
Founded on 27 May 2005 by Fabian Schneider, MicroWiki was initially hosted on the wiki hosting service (wikifarm) Wikicities—now Fandom—at micronations.wikicities.com. On 27 March 2006, Wikicities changed its name to Wikia, and MicroWiki's domain was accordingly moved to micronations.wikia.com MicroWiki migrated to an independent domain—microwiki.co.cc—on 8 November 2010. Intended to be temporary, microwiki.org.uk replaced the .co.cc domain on 2 December. On 7 November 2013, MicroWiki moved to micronation.org after financial shortfalls meant that site owner Petya d'Égtavie could no longer afford the .co.uk domain. On 21 October 2016, MicroWiki switched to its current domain, micronations.wiki, after complications with the previous domain host.
History
When MicroWiki was founded by Fabian Schneider on 27 May 2005, it was hosted on the wiki hosting service (wikifarm) Wikicities—now Fandom—at the domain micronations.wikicities.com. On 27 March 2006, Wikicities changed its name to Wikia, and MicroWiki's domain was accordingly moved to micronations.wikia.com On 17 October 2010, Wikia announced changes to its website's layout and graphical user interface which proved unpopular with the users of MicroWiki, who immediately began brainstorming alternative wiki hosting services to Wikia. Two services, ShoutWiki and Referata—hosted at micronations.shoutwiki.com and micronations.referata.com respectively—were initially considered, however each had their own technical problems which made transferring the wiki's content unfeasible. On 8 November, Petya d'Égtavie of Egtavia proposed that the wiki be moved instead to a privately-hosted server, and that a committee of nations collectively help pay for the website. On 14 November, the domain microwiki.co.cc was registered by d'Égtavie on behalf of his MicroWiki Internet Committee, with the intent of having it be a temporary domain until a better one could be agreed upon by the users of the wiki. .co.cc was chosen as it was owned by a web hosting company which offered free subdomain registration; while .cc is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, .co.cc was not an official hierarchy of the ccTLD. By 2 December, the domain microwiki.org.uk had replaced the .co.cc domain.
In October 2013, concerns began to be raised over the future of MicroWiki's domain after financial shortfalls amidst a significant drop in site visits which meant that running advertisements on the wiki were no longer profitable. In November, d'Égtavie purchased the domain micronation.org from Luxor (Karl Friedrich) for "around £20" with the intention of using it as the domain for MicroWiki—the domain costing less annually, and perhaps also seeing it more fit for an international website dedicated to micronations as opposed to .org.uk, the country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom.[a] The move was finalised on 7 November. However, the domain move consequently deleted most of the original server data, including all page revision histories and all registered user accounts (including edit counts). On 21 October 2016, MicroWiki switched to its current domain, micronations.wiki, after complications with the previous domain host.
Subdomains
MicroWiki's sister projects are hosted as subdomains of micronations.wiki—Czech MicroWiki at cs.micronations.wiki, MicroCommons at commons.micronations.wiki and MicroWikiDictionary at dictionary.micronations.com. Former projects included the GUM Guides at guides.micronations.wiki (2018–2021), MicroWiki Archive at archive.microwiki.org.uk (2012–2013), MicroWikiBase at base.micronations.wiki, MicroWikiMedia at media.microwiki.org.uk (2011–2012), MicroWiki News at news.microwiki.org.uk (2012–2013) and UnMicroWiki at un.microwiki.org.uk (2011–2013). The MicroWiki forums had several domains between its foundation in December 2010 and discontinuation in January 2021: first hosted as a webpage on the MicroWiki website at microwiki.org.uk/forum (2010–2013), forum.micronation.org (2013–2016), and finally forum.micronations.wiki.
Other current and former subdomains include bank.micronations.wiki for the erstwhile Micronational Economic Group, en.micronations.wiki as the hypothetical domain for an English-language edition of a multilingual MicroWiki, gitlab.micronations.wiki for the open-core service GitLab, mail.micronations.wiki for MicroWiki's e-mailing notifications, pma.micronations.wiki for phpMyAdmin—database access using a graphical user interface—status.micronations.wiki for MicroWiki's server uptime status and team.micronations.wiki for MicroWiki's Phabricator.
Other domains
MicroWiki technical administrator Andrew owns the domain micronation.wiki, which redirects to the main page of MicroWiki. Karl Friedrich also owns the domain hack micro.wiki.
Footnotes
- ↑ .uk is the country code top-level domain for the UK: .org.uk is a second-level domain intended for use by not-for-profit entities.