diff --git a/ox/html.py b/ox/html.py
index 642dd55..815f657 100644
--- a/ox/html.py
+++ b/ox/html.py
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 import re
 import string
 from six.moves.html_entities import name2codepoint
-from six import unichr, PY2
+from six import unichr, PY2, string_types
 
 
 # Configuration for add_links() function
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ def escape(html):
     >>> escape('html "test" & <brothers>')
     'html &quot;test&quot; &amp; &lt;brothers&gt;'
     '''
-    if not isinstance(html, basestring):
+    if not isinstance(html, string_types):
         html = str(html)
     return html.replace('&', '&amp;').replace('<', '&lt;').replace('>', '&gt;').replace('"', '&quot;').replace("'", '&apos;')
 
diff --git a/ox/normalize.py b/ox/normalize.py
index e3876f3..128f33c 100644
--- a/ox/normalize.py
+++ b/ox/normalize.py
@@ -4,6 +4,9 @@
 import re
 import unicodedata
 
+from six import string_types
+
+
 _articles = ('the', 'la', 'a', 'die', 'der', 'le', 'el',
              "l'", 'il', 'das', 'les', 'o', 'ein', 'i', 'un', 'los', 'de',
              'an', 'una', 'las', 'eine', 'den', 'gli', 'het', 'os', 'lo',
@@ -95,7 +98,7 @@ def normalize_imdbid(imdbId):
     >>> normalize_imdbid('tt0159206')
     '0159206'
     """
-    if isinstance(imdbId, basestring):
+    if isinstance(imdbId, string_types):
         imdbId = re.sub('.*(\d{7}).*', '\\1', imdbId)
     elif isinstance(imdbId, int):
         imdbId = "%07d" % imdbId
diff --git a/ox/web/archive.py b/ox/web/archive.py
index 52ac487..0c733c3 100644
--- a/ox/web/archive.py
+++ b/ox/web/archive.py
@@ -3,6 +3,8 @@
 from .. import cache
 from ..utils import json
 
+from six import string_types
+
 def get_id(url):
     return url.split("/")[-1]
 
@@ -19,7 +21,7 @@ def get_data(id):
             data[key] = details['metadata'][key]
             if isinstance(data[key], list):
                 data[key] = data[key][0]
-            if isinstance(data[key], basestring):
+            if isinstance(data[key], string_types):
                 data[key] = data[key].strip()
                 if data[key][0] == '[' and data[key][-1] == ']':
                     data[key] = data[key][1:-1] 
diff --git a/ox/web/wikipedia.py b/ox/web/wikipedia.py
index 0e9d8de..beacdac 100644
--- a/ox/web/wikipedia.py
+++ b/ox/web/wikipedia.py
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ from __future__ import print_function
 import re
 
 from six.moves import urllib
+from six import string_types
 
 from ox.utils import json
 from ox.cache import read_url
@@ -68,7 +69,7 @@ def get_movie_data(wikipedia_url):
                     value = value.split('<br>')
                 if value:
                     if key in filmbox:
-                        if isinstance(value, list) and isinstance(filmbox[key], basestring):
+                        if isinstance(value, list) and isinstance(filmbox[key], string_types):
                             filmbox[key] = [filmbox[key]] + value
                         else:
                             filmbox[key] += value