User blog:Jpearson/Everything You Need to Know About Mobile Theming

Hey everyone!

Mobile Theming is here and we’re excited to deliver one of the most-requested additions for our editors. Before, we didn’t provide the ability to add theming to mobile skin. A few hundred Gamepedia communities still have active mobile custom CSS, and so have mobile theming, while Fandom communities never had that ability until now. Gamepedia used to be able to style their pages on mobile using custom code, and it’s time to bring mobile theming to you through a theme designer that brings your wiki’s identity to life and provides ease of use. Mobile theming is easy to use and accessible to admins of all skill sets! We mentioned how important it is to provide an inclusive and accessible experience for anyone that contributes to and visits Fandom. Releasing this feature with your feedback and support means a great deal to us as we continue to make this site accessible for all.

If you’re interested in learning more about making your wiki more accessible, check out our latest blog post detailing the ways you can create accessible content!

Mobile Theming
Based on community feedback, the lack of mobile theming has been a pain point for the last couple of years. Broader user research and surveys confirmed this was at the top of users’ wishlists. This was highly requested and thanks to your helpful feedback, we were able to deliver mobile theming! A large portion of traffic comes from mobile and this initiative allows your wiki identity to now carry over to mobile. Before opting in to mobile theming, you must first resolve any color contrast issues. Then you have the option to turn on mobile theming to help you finalize your theme. You may use one of these or pick your own. It is important to note that CSS customizations made for desktop do not carry over to mobile. That leads to theming differences between mobile and desktop even once mobile theming is switched on. You can access this feature by checking out the mobile previewer we’ve added to Theme Designer! Take advantage and update your mobile theme to ensure it is accessible to anyone visiting your site.

In our Technical Updates series, we mentioned our progress on the mobile theming test with 15 wikis. This test applied the community’s customized theme's colors, fonts, and background image to the FandomMobile skin. The feedback we received during testing from these 15 communities enabled us to bring mobile theming to you all now. It also surfaced several valuable feature suggestions that we're exploring for early next year. The top requests we’re focusing on are:


 * 1) Allowing communities more control over how their background image gets positioned/cropped on mobile
 * 2) Applying  styling to additional elements, such as

Here's an example of light and dark Mobile Theming with Stranger Things wiki!

Check out the Theme Designer mobile preview!

What’s Next?
Thanks to everyone that provided helpful feedback for Mobile Theming! We greatly appreciate your help and could not have done this without your valuable input. We hope you enjoy this feature as much as we’ve enjoyed building it. Remember to share your feedback with our Wiki Representatives, contact the Customer Support Team, and reach out to us on Discord. We also encourage you to take a look at the Theme Designer help page!

Until then, stay tuned for more updates about creator tools!