A Deeper Look at Theme Designer on FandomDesktop
Hey gang!
As promised in the introduction to FandomDesktop back in March, we’re continuing our “More Is More” approach to previewing the changes coming to Fandom and Gamepedia for desktop users later this Spring and into the Summer. More transparency, more design thinking, and more in-depth looks at what is changing before the rollout.
Today, we are looking at how Theme Designer is leveling up with FandomDesktop with new features, better performance solutions, and more customization options to bring your community’s identity to life.
As part of the UCX project, we’ve rebuilt Theme Designer from the ground up as a stronger feature to enhance the new experience. In other areas of the UCX, we’re focused more on optimizing existing features for t…
This Month at Fandom - April 2021
Hey gang!
It is said that April Showers bring May Flowers and while that may be true, we are certain that April Showers bring This Month at Fandom - April Edition, so let us observe our monthly ritual and debrief on the month that was April 2021.
- 1 A Deeper Dive into FandomDesktop
- 2 Meeting Fanatical
- 3 Cool April Data
- 4 Editors of the Month
After revealing FandomDesktop for the first time at Community Connect in March (over Brandon’s birthday!) and then more widely a few weeks later, we spent April taking a deeper look at different core components of the wiki platform receiving changes with the new design.
Derek Hart, manager of the Product Design team, joined us for his third Discord Ask Me Anything session on April 13th, answering questions about h…
A deeper look at Navigation on FandomDesktop
Hey gang!
As promised in the introduction to FandomDesktop back in March, we’re continuing our More Is More approach to previewing the changes coming to Fandom and Gamepedia for desktop users later this Spring and into the Summer. More transparency, more design thinking, more in-depth looks at what is changing before the rollout. Today, we are looking at how navigation is evolving with FandomDesktop.
- 1 Community on Top
- 1.1 Navigation Always Within Reach
- 2 The Creator Toolbox
- 3 Going Global
- 4 What about search, profile, and notifications?
- 5 Change Gives Rise To Opportunity
Local community links will be the first ones at the top of the screen, a change for both Fandom and Gamepedia so that top priority navigation affordance is given to communities. The gl…
A deeper look at Article Pages on FandomDesktop
Hey gang!
A couple of weeks ago, we gave you the first widely public preview of FandomDesktop, the unification of the desktop experiences of Fandom and Gamepedia. In that preview, we doubled down on our Community Connect commitment to “More is More” with you, meaning more transparency, more candidness, and more in-depth looks at changes well before they happen. In continuation of that commitment, let’s recap how article pages are changing with FandomDesktop with some additional insight into how we reached these changes.
- 1 Starting at the heart of the matter
- 2 Solving for multiple use cases
- 3 But wait… there’s more!
- 4 And those other buttons?
- 5 Once more, into the editor!
- 6 More is More
- 7 What’s next?
When we talk about wikis being the core experience of F…
This Month at Fandom - March 2021
Hey gang!
Today is Meeting Day, the unofficial Parks & Recreation holiday marking the time that April Ludgate forgot March 31st actually existed and rescheduled all of Ron Swanson’s meetings for that date.
Ron had 93 meetings scheduled, which coincidentally is about 20 meetings fewer than Brandon Rhea has on a given day :)
In the spirit of large numbers which make the day special (and in keeping with tradition), we’re going to explore some cool community data right after I recap some BIG news from this month of March.
- 1 More is More
- 2 Wiki Rules and Blocking
- 3 Smash the bugs!
- 4 Domain Migration
- 5 Data Time!
- 5.1 The Mother of all Mother Boxes
- 5.2 In Memorium
- 5.3 Buddy Cop Show (but they’re superheroes)
- 6 Editors of the Month
- 7 In Closing
At the beginning of March,…
Bug Squashing Week 2 Roundup
Hey gang!
As promised, here is a rundown of all the bugs smashed in the second week of our pause to address quality of life bugs while the Design team iterated through all the great feedback we've received about the UCX preview at Community Connect. That public preview I promised? It was posted last night. Say hello to FandomDesktop!
This week, the following bugs were fixed:
- A bug with wiki-description-site-meta on FandomMobile not being fully secure
- A bug with code blocks in articles not displaying correctly on FandomMobile
- A bug causing cursor on search results to miss the pointer property
- A bug causing the upload form to duplicate the summary heading when manually adding a summary heading with no spaces (we're now being sanctioned by the UN f…
Introducing FandomDesktop, the new look and feel for desktop users
Hey gang!
One of the most often-asked questions throughout the migrations to the Unified Community Platform (UCP) has been, “what will the new design be for the platform?” That’s what we’re going to dig into today. You’re going to see what the new FandomDesktop experience looks like. You’re going to see what this project is and is not, the kinds of feedback we’ve incorporated, where we’ve drawn from lessons learned on both Fandom and Gamepedia, and what the different experiences for readers and logged in editors are.
A few weekends ago at Community Connect, one of the commitments we made is that “more is more.” More transparency. More context. More candidness. More information. This blog is really long, but it’s an effort to deliver on that …
Bug Smashing Week 1 Roundup
Hey gang!
As promised, here is a rundown of all the bugs smashed in the first week of our pause to address quality of life bugs while the Design team iterates through all the great feedback we've received about the UCX preview at Community Connect. You can expect a public preview of the UCX very soon!
On Tuesday, the following bugs were fixed:
- A bug causing the table of contents to show both numbered and bulleted styling
- A bug causing the Project namespace to not have the right rail enabled
- A bug causing updates to the Fandom Design System to cause issues with diff styling and icons
- A bug causing Special:SocialActivity to parse templates, breaking the page layout and potentially causing abuse
- A bug causing the characters F, D, and X to break gall…
Pausing new development to do some bug smashing
Hey gang!
Before we dive into the future of the platform and the new Unified Customer Experience (AKA UCX) - and we will VERY soon - I wanted to take some time to talk about an all-hands quality of life project we’re working on right now, as all but one of the migrations to the Unified Community Platform (UCP) are now complete.
Yesterday, all four wiki platform engineering teams took a pause on UCX and other development work and dove into UCP bug fixing mode. While these teams have been working on critical bugs consistently for the past few months, there has been a steady build-up of non-critical bugs which are best described as “quality of life” issues. These are things that don’t quite work just right, but aren’t completely breaking a feat…
This Month at Fandom - February 2021
Hey gang!
The shortest month of the year has come and gone, but what it lacked in length, February made up for in intensity! I’m feeling musically minded today, so all of the segments this week are titled with songs and lyrics.
- 1 Harder, Better, Faster
- 2 You say Goodbye, while I say Hello!
- 3 New Rules
- 4 We Are Born To Play
- 5 Don’t Stop Me Now
- 6 Hey Look Ma, I Made It! (Editors of the Month)
- 7 That’s It
While the news this week that Daft Punk has broken up after 28 years of amazing music is sad, we’ll always have their incredible electronic beats and one of the greatest live action Disney soundtracks of all time. Seriously, if you haven’t watched TRON: Legacy let, go give it a watch this weekend and see if you don’t agree on that soundtrack being absolute …