Community Suggestion: Change Article Templates
Change Article Templates
What functionality is missing? What is unsatisfying with the current situation?
I have made a huge amount of time writing Dozens of short post-it note style articles to organize the shops and guilds in a DnD setting, and there is no way for me to change them from an Organization into a Landmark short of Deleting them and meticulously transferring them all over, relinking all the cross linking to every map pin, character, session note, etc. It is extremely frustrating, and it forces me to start over on something I have spent hours meticulously linking together so people could use it. Sure, I could leave it as is and deal with it later, but it feels a lot easier to just... change the article template instead of Copy the information into a safe place, delete an article, make a new article with the right template, then comb back through and find all the places it was linked and re-link the new article.
How does this feature request address the current situation?
Just let me change all the articles I wrote to another template. Give me a pop-up warning that says "Hey, if you do that, these fields will be deleted" or even say "Hey, you have information in these fields, where would you like that to go in the new template?" And let me port Leader to Owner/Ruler etc.
What are other uses for this feature request?
It allows for the evolution of articles during planning without having to be destructive with articles to keep things clean, I can transition information into a form that is better suited. It will let people list articles as Generic and then transition them into other Templates later on without having to make a whole new article, and re link everything to it.
The Team's Response
Thanks for the suggestion! We are accepting this under consideration. This has been suggested and declined many times due to technical issues. However, since this keeps coming up, we will try to investigate this again and see if there are any implementation methods that we can try.25/300 Votes · +5604 points
Votes Cast
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+300
by sunnybirdboi
on 2026-08-13 00:37Getting to change article templates would be huge! Even if it requires going through and relinking articles with the new hyperlink, it would still be hugely beneficial over having to completely remake everything. The old article editor had a way to pull up all articles that reference the article currently being edited, if that could be accessed when changing the template of the article being edited, that would make the entire process so much easier. I can't count how many times I've made an article just to have the link ready in the article referencing it, and then come back way later to fill out the idea and realize I used the wrong template when creating it... after linking it in a ton of other articles. It's a long process of opening the article in the old editor, pulling the reference list, and then slogging through... all before getting to delete the incorrectly templated one. Even shaving a few steps off that process would make a lot of things a lot easier!
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+300
by BurningGod
on 2026-08-11 22:52 -
+100
by TheEldritchVespero
on 2026-08-11 22:20 -
+300
by Calmtripod
on 2026-08-10 22:23 -
+300
by Flokkuthra
on 2026-08-10 06:42 -
+300
by Ellianette
on 2026-08-10 05:26 -
+300
by Neverborn Publishing
on 2026-08-09 21:03 -
+300
by Rashkavar
on 2026-08-09 09:42If this is too difficult to do on the backend, a useful alternative might be allowing the use of pointer articles which redirect to another article. For example: The situation above where a guild is listed as an organization but their headquarters needs to be a location for map pinning purposes: make a location article, mark it as a pointer to the guild organization article, and use the location article for purposes of pinning the guild HQ on the map. A country that was made as a location (perhaps because the article was originally made to be pinned to a map, but needs to show up in a diplomacy web: make an organization article that's a pointer to the country location, and use that organization pointer in the diplomacy web.
A second alternative would be to allow hybrid templates (which might be useful for something like a country where it's both a physical space and a government.) By this I mean adding all the features of two templates together into one. Like maybe taking an organization but adding all of the fields associated with a geographic location. -
+300
by spooktacular
on 2026-08-09 08:33 -
+100
by theyellowlady
on 2026-08-02 05:54 -
+300
by Scalenex
on 2026-07-30 08:21I think this would be difficult to do. But if it's possible, I'm all for it.
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+300
by SiobhantheWriter
on 2026-07-30 07:30 -
+300
by EleKTriiK
on 2026-07-29 11:58 -
+300
by Alikzander_Wulfe
on 2026-07-28 16:45 -
+100
by ss2020
on 2026-07-27 06:39 -
+300
by A Adorable Unicorn
on 2026-07-26 04:42 -
+300
by Shewstone Publishing
on 2026-07-25 21:14 -
+1
by Mahdi Avendesora
on 2026-07-24 16:04 -
+100
by Gregorian
on 2026-07-22 13:08 -
+100
by PhoenixRae
on 2026-07-21 16:47 -
+1
by kaixabu
on 2026-07-21 12:55 -
+1
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+300
by ISpeakDragonese
on 2026-07-20 18:09 -
+1
by Those2Nerds
on 2026-07-20 16:56This was accepted as an investigation task years ago. You can read the team's official response here: https://www.worldanvil.com/community/voting/suggestion/837da824-1f18-43f8-8b48-33b38b428585/view I'd also love for templates to be a lot more flexible than they are, but I suspect it would require WA to have a very different infrastructure.
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+300
by FictionFan1995
on 2026-07-20 15:04 -
+300
by XanAeron
on 2026-07-20 08:33
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