User blog:Dopp/Technical Update: March 14, 2011

This week, we’re rolling out our system updates on Tuesday instead of Wednesday because our first ever Hack-a-thon! For two days this week, everyone on our Engineering team will work on creative, experimental projects of their choice. We’re excited to see what new ideas and prototypes develop.

Here are the latest technical updates at Wikia. Keep in mind that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.

New Features

 * JS minification (no functional changes, just improving site performance)
 * Separating Semantic MediaWiki databases from other site databases (will reduce site downtime and improve performance)

Major Bugs Fixed

 * Save + preview + edit summary bar was arranged wrong on user talk pages
 * PhotosOnThisWiki module wasn’t recognizing moved Files
 * New wiki builder did not have a fallback language if target language translation was unavailable. That is now “en - English”.
 * Usernames that included a “+” character were experiencing glitchy navigation
 * Rich text editor didn’t allow a user to create and modify a poll in the same edit session

Other Notable Changes

 * We’re working on some design improvements to our rich text editor, and will keep you posted as we get closer to rolling them out.
 * As with most releases, improvements to messages for the international community.
 * We're in the process of changing the system we use for our help tickets.

Select Known Issues

 * While testing for a new way to handle wiki adoptions, some test emails were accidentally sent out; please disregard them.
 * We are also looking into watchlist emails sent out for edits conducted by User:WikiaStaff. WikiaStaff is a background task that should not make edits nor trigger watchlist emails.
 * The TabView extension may be slowing some sites that have that extension enabled due to an extra rendering layer utilized by the extension.

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