Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page

There are several possibilities for why you will want to rename a page (one that you have found or created):

• The title has been misspelled.
• The title does not follow the naming conventions.
• The scope of the article has been reduced, extended or otherwise changed.

Note that you have to be logged in to rename a page this way; regarding the set preferences:

1. there is no button for this in the nostalgia skin;
2. the button is in the quickbar, so this must be on.

When you've got your article up, click on the "Move page" link in the sidebar. You'll be asked for a new name for the article, and given the option to also move the article's talk page. (Unless you know what you're doing, it's safest to say yes.) Click the "move page"and the page will be renamed to the new title. The old title will become a redirect page, so any links to the old title will still go to the new page. However, note that double redirects (pages that redirect to the original article), will not automatically follow to the new article, so you will have to refer them manually. (as explained below)

Notes

The "move page" function keeps the entire edit history of the article, before and after the move, in one place, as if the article were always named that way. So, it's preferable to use this method over just cutting text out of one article and pasting it into a new one; old revisions, notes, and attributions are harder to keep track of it you do that. (But you may have to if, for instance, you're splitting a page into multiple topics. If you do, please include a note in the new article's summary and talk page of where you took the text from.)

The move itself is shown in the edit history of the page with the old title. However, if the page is moved back, the edit history of the page with the previous title shows the latest move only, with the corresponding user name, but with the date and time of the first move(!).

If the new title already exists and isn't just a redirect with no history, the wiki will tell you that you can't rename the article. You'll either have to manually merge the two pages together, or -- only if there's no real content in the page -- ask to have it deleted to make room for moving the page.

Another thing to remember is that redirects to redirects aren't automatically followed (this prevents infinite loops and spaghetti linking). Always check the What links here for your page, and if there are multiple levels of redirects, go fix the links to point to the new location directly. But this can be troublesome because your new moving might be reverted soon. Take some time to make sure there is no objection to your moving.

Avoid moving a page while the edit box of the corresponding Talk page is open: when you hit "Save page" you overwrite the redirect to the new talk page (you do not get the usual warning that the page has been edited while your edit box was open) and get a duplication of the contents of the talk page, with your latest addition added to the old instead of the new one.

It is useful to copy the message "Page ... moved to ..." to the new talk page, especially if there has been discussion about the name of the page.

See also:

• How to edit a page
• How to use redirect pages
• The Wikipedia sandbox, where you can practice editing pages.