User blog:Dopp/Technical Update: November 15, 2011

Here are the latest technical updates at Wikia. Keep in mind that our system updates happen every Wednesday, so we’re posting this on a Tuesday to give you advance notice. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.

New Features

 * In response to many requests from our test wiki users, we've added a Greeting feature to Message Wall. This will allow you to post whatever content you'd like at the top of your wall (instructions, vacation announcements, etc). To add content to your greeting, visit the page, Message_Wall_Greeting:. The greeting will only display if there is content in it. (Reminder: We're still in early testing stages, but you can try out Message Wall at our Community Test Wiki.) (Update: This will not work until Wednesday when our code is released. Pages created before then will not carry over into the system -- you will lose your work and need to start from scratch.)

Major Bugs Fixed

 * The new Favicon upload tool was not working properly.
 * There was a period last week where some users were unable to register for accounts or change their passwords. If you notice anyone having any trouble logging in, please encourage them to Contact Us.

Other Notable Changes

 * The editor will now have a dark theme for dark wikis.
 * We're updating the URL structure for Message Wall threads so that they're shorter and don't include usernames.

Select Known Issues

 * Quick Stats in the Admin Dashboard aren't showing the latest weeks' data.
 * Some logs are missing some entries -- we're working on a fix.
 * We've made some changes to the back-end architecture of Chat to improve stability; however, we're still seeing some issues, and will continue to work on long-term solutions.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave them below. And if you have additional bugs to report, please send them to us via Special:Contact.

Update: Another known issue is that some ImageMaps are displaying red error messages. A simple workaround for this is to add an alignment parameter as seen here, however we're also working on a better fix. Thanks to our commenters below for identifying both the issue and the workaround!