Is anyone here familiar with WordPress (this is to publish the encyclopedia about my fantasy world)?

[Miaristan]

I'm here because I aspire to write and publish an encyclopedia about my fantasy world.

Seasoned worldbuilding artists often think of WorldAnvil, Inkarnate, etc. but when I checked, I noticed they were very limited and constrained in features and maximum number of contributors.

So, instead, I thought I would instead opt for something more akin to MediaWiki/Wikipedia, so I created a WordPress website a few days ago. I preferred WordPress because it provided much more features and flexibility for an ambitious worldbuilding artist like me.

Now, I was to know if many other people here also used WordPress in the context of their worldbuilding creations, and if so, I was to ask if it was a good idea to install a dedicated wiki/encyclopedia plugin for creating a huge encyclopedia about a fantasy world, of if in the end, it was not very necessary. This is because I tried one plugin, and it does not seem to be very adapted for the ones who would rather have something akin to MediaWiki.

So, thanks you, and have a good day!

 

[pmmg]

So...I had a wordpress site for a game group I had, but not for world building and writing.

I have looked into WorldAnvil, and the turn off to me is that it must be public unless you subscribe and send them money. I would like to build in private and only show the public what I wish.

Word Press has the advantage that it is portable (it can be hosted on any server, including one in your basement if you wish it). It also has a lot of modules to plug in and do a lot of the work for you. If you are not a web coder, you can go quite a long way before that comes to bite you. With any of these platforms (word press, wix, squarepace...) it would not hurt to have someone who understands the code some where you can reach out to.

Um...the features you want to add are entirely on you. If you want a wold building space to pop up your world, and Word Press has enough of the formatting to let you do it...then sounds like a win to me. If that was my aim, I would do it and not look back. But....the work is all on you. If you want a feature and the template, or plug in, does not offer it. you have to code it, or get some one to code it, or...just not have it.

I'd say, for those who want a website, and have zero-to cursory interest in coding, Word Press is a great thing to have. IF you have real coding skill, you might move past it, or you might like that it done a lot of the work already.

For myself, if I become so inclined, I was thinking of using world anvil and just linking to it.

 

[Miaristan]

My website is hosted by Hostinger, which provides a file manager for WP websites for those who would need to look for the PHP code. I had to modify the PHP code only once (to fix an issue with auto-updates for my themes, plugins, and WP version), but the thing is as compared to building a website from scratch, WordPress requires much more minimal coding skills.

It has to be said that originally, I was writing about my fantasy world using MS Word files, but my fantasy world would clearly have been too large to be contained in a single Word file, so I had the idea to create a WordPress website in response. In fact, not even WorldAnvil, Inkarnate, etc. would have been well suited for someone like me who wants to build something very very huge and large.

 

[ThinkerX]

My author site is on WordPress.

I have been meaning to add Worldbuilding info to it for a while. I just need to figure out what buttons to hit....

 

[Prince of Spires]

What you listed isn't enough to rally make a decision either way. What are your exact requirements?

- Do you want everyone to be able to edit your pages?
- How many pages are you thinking of?
- Only text or also images?
- Accesible publicly or only private access?
- Does it have to be online or is it just for you and having local access on your computer is good enough?

I would say that Wordpress can do whatever you want / need it to do. It might not be the best tool out there, but it has a few things going for it. By far the biggest one is that it's big and not going anywhere. That means that you can probably find a dozen guides online to setting up a wiki on Wordpress, there will be a handful of plugins that do the work for you, and there will be a community around that knows how to do what you want it to do.

Is it the best for the job? Probably not. However, it's free, and it probably does a good enough job. It's also flexible, which means that if you find out halfway through that you actually wanted something else, then you can switch easily instead of being locked into a very specific type of software that does a type of wiki really well, but it only does that.

 

[Miaristan]

What you listed isn't enough to rally make a decision either way. What are your exact requirements?

- Do you want everyone to be able to edit your pages?
- How many pages are you thinking of?
- Only text or also images?
- Accesible publicly or only private access?
- Does it have to be online or is it just for you and having local access on your computer is good enough?

I would say that Wordpress can do whatever you want / need it to do. It might not be the best tool out there, but it has a few things going for it. By far the biggest one is that it's big and not going anywhere. That means that you can probably find a dozen guides online to setting up a wiki on Wordpress, there will be a handful of plugins that do the work for you, and there will be a community around that knows how to do what you want it to do.

Is it the best for the job? Probably not. However, it's free, and it probably does a good enough job. It's also flexible, which means that if you find out halfway through that you actually wanted something else, then you can switch easily instead of being locked into a very specific type of software that does a type of wiki really well, but it only does that.

Maybe could I answer your five questions.

1) I would certainly want the registered users to edit the pages, more akin to a social community.
2) In fact, I intend to make it so huge that I could forget about doing it alone and would certainly need more people to contribute to the creation of my fantasy world. This is why I had in mind the idea of a collaborative worldbuilding project.
3) I would say both. Even adding videos in fact.
4) I would say accessibly publicly on the long-term. I could firstly keep it private while my website is still in his beta phase.
5) It certainly has to be online and available worldwide.

In fact, I had WordPress in mind because in comparison, World Anvil only allows a very limited number of contributors in a same project, Wonderdraft (let alone Inkarnate or Dungeondraft) doesn't allow maps to have more than 8,000 pixels, a typical Azgaar-generated map would barely include more than 10 or 20 countries/nations at all, so this is safe to say the major artists in the industry would probably frown upon the use of the "worldbuilding software" altogether and would instead opt for more powerful/commercial products like Photoshop, Affinity, Substance 3D, Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, Autodesk, etc.

 

[dollyt8]

Maybe could I answer your five questions.

1) I would certainly want the registered users to edit the pages, more akin to a social community.
2) In fact, I intend to make it so huge that I could forget about doing it alone and would certainly need more people to contribute to the creation of my fantasy world. This is why I had in mind the idea of a collaborative worldbuilding project.
3) I would say both. Even adding videos in fact.
4) I would say accessibly publicly on the long-term. I could firstly keep it private while my website is still in his beta phase.
5) It certainly has to be online and available worldwide.

In fact, I had WordPress in mind because in comparison, World Anvil only allows a very limited number of contributors in a same project, Wonderdraft (let alone Inkarnate or Dungeondraft) doesn't allow maps to have more than 8,000 pixels, a typical Azgaar-generated map would barely include more than 10 or 20 countries/nations at all, so this is safe to say the major artists in the industry would probably frown upon the use of the "worldbuilding software" altogether and would instead opt for more powerful/commercial products like Photoshop, Affinity, Substance 3D, Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, Autodesk, etc.

Number 1 is going to be very hard to achieve with WordPress, certainly if you're using the free version. Number two is the same; there's a limit on how many files you can upload and keep live on the site even with the lower tiers of a paid site. 3. You can add videos without too much trouble, with the previous caveat. 4. Just be aware that WP doesn't get much traffic, particularly the free version, without an insane amount of effort and SEO. You might get the occasional reader through WordPress itself from other blog writers, but the reality is it takes an enormous amount of time for anyone to find your site and start to contribute. So just realize this will be a very long-term project that likely will not produce the results you hope for. I currently have six subscribers on mine and I've been posting once a week for nearly a year. I have 36,000 words on the site along with pictures, etc. and I originally planned to make it more of a forum that people could contribute to and discuss, but it became obvious that no one is actually going to do that. Your world may be way more interesting and you may have surprising success; I'm just trying to make you aware that not everyone does.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Number 1 is going to be very hard to achieve with WordPress, certainly if you're using the free version. Number two is the same; there's a limit on how many files you can upload and keep live on the site even with the lower tiers of a paid site.

This very much sounds like you're hosting your site with Wordpress (on Wordpress.com). If that's the case, then your answers might not apply to the OP. There is a difference between using Wordpress to create your website (in this case, you're just using the software), and hosting your website on the Wordpress server.

He's hosting his site somewhere else, which means he has different limitations. When I look at my own site (which is hosted somewhere else), I'm using the cheapest version, which is €4.50 a month. That gives me 100gb of diskspace, and I can do whatever I want with that. If I upgrade that to the next lowest tier (for €7 a month), then I get unlimited diskspace.

Therefore, the number of users I can add to my website, and the number of files and pages I can add to my site, are only limited by the software. The theoretical limit of the number of WP users is 18446744073709551615 (since no more will fit into the specific type of variable they're using for users). The practical limit will more likely be around 400.000.

As for files and pages, there isn't really any limit in the number of them you can add to a Wordpress site. The hosting provider might have limits, but as I mentioned, my hosting provider gives me enough space to do whatever I can think of for relatively cheaply.

And by the time he starts going anywhere near these limits, he'll have such a big site that he'll have different things to worry about. Even 100.000 users and 100gb worth of pages and files is a huge website by any metric. As in, Wikipedia has something like 120.000 active editors a month.

The rest of your post is very much valid though. It's very hard to get people to find your website and actually care about it. And get enough people there that it becomes a community. It's not impossible of course. It's just very, very hard. Why would people care about your worldbuilding encyclopedia?

 

[tenebrae]

I think if you are wanting to build a community that can edit pages - maybe try out Fandom?