Theme Designer support for Discussions
Hey gang!
Today, I’m excited to talk to you about an upcoming expansion of our Theme Designer tool for wiki administrators. As you know, Theme Designer 2.0 launched with FandomDesktop this summer which included Light and Dark theme support. We’ve already delivered a change to the feature, allowing you to set your community background as a header or full background, thanks to great feedback from administrators. In a few weeks, we’re delivering another big change that the community has requested for years and Theme Designer 2.0 allows us to achieve: Theme Designer support is coming to Discussions!
- 1 Some Background
- 2 The Unification of Theme Designer
- 3 When can we get it?
- 4 An Extra Benefit
Theming is how communities stand out and express their unique …
Celebrating the Hispanic Heritage Month with Fandom
Hello everyone!
For those who don't know me yet, I’m Héctor Donís, one of the Fandom Community Managers. Even though I've been working for this company for almost a decade, and I’ve been publishing more than one hundred blog posts on Comunidad Central, this is my first one here on Community Central! And the purpose why I’m doing it couldn’t be better: to celebrate the Hispanic Heritage Month with you!
The Hispanic Heritage Month is currently an observance period in the United States for recognizing the contributions and influence of the Hispanic Americans to their history, culture and achievements.
It started as the Hispanic Heritage Week in 1968, being September 15 the starting point because the anniversary of the independence of Costa Rica, E…
Starlight Design-A-Gown Contest
Hey gang!
Today, I’m really excited to announce a partnership that has become near and dear to my heart. Fandom is teaming up with Starlight Children’s Foundation for a very fun contest to help bring joy to kids dealing with serious illness across the United States by providing them with awesome hospital gowns that are more comfortable and more colorful than the standard gowns.
What is Starlight?
Starlight Children’s Foundation opened its doors in 1982 with a simple but impactful mission: Delivering happiness to seriously ill children. They are best known for their Starlight Gaming program, bringing gaming stations to children’s hospitals to provide kids with an escape into imagined worlds. Over the past 39 years, they have helped more than 1…
This Month at Fandom - August 2021
Hey gang!
The dog days of summer (which are a real thing, defined as July 3rd to August 11th, the rising of the Sirius star system in the northern hemisphere) have passed us by and with them, quite a bit of exciting stuff. Let’s observe our rituals and traditions once more and dive into the month that was August 2021.
- 1 New Brand, Who Dis?
- 2 Community Connect: Part Deux
- 3 Speaking of enhancements…
- 4 Data Is Fun
- 5 Editors of the Month
- 6 One More Thing…
At the beginning of the month, we launched our refresh of the Fandom brand across all aspects of our company, from the wiki platform to D&D Beyond to Fanatical to our email signatures to our presentation slides.
The future of Fandom, as Brandon coined it, came as a surprise to some of you, but I’m pleased t…
Site Notice and Anon Notice return to Fandom
Hey gang!
The development team has re-enabled the Site Notice feature for all Fandom wikis. Admins can edit this on /wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice to provide wiki-level notifications to all users. This fills the stopgap solution provided by the WikiaNotification script, which will be deprecated now that Site Notice is enabled.
Why is this good for you? It allows you to provide high-value announcements to all of your wiki’s visitors, including logged-out users and mobile users, through a native MediaWiki feature.
Best Practices for Site Notice Use
- Use a site notice for important or temporary messages updates only. If a site notice used too often, regular users to your wiki might begin to ignore it, which makes it harder to get the really important …
A trio of wiki enhancements for editors and admins
Hey gang!
Now that FandomDesktop is fully rolled out to all Fandom wikis, we’re ready to reveal our first post-release changes.
Theme Designer enhancement
Starting next week (the week of August 16th, 2021), Theme Designer will natively support full-sized backgrounds again.
In collecting feedback from a number of admins, many found that, while the CSS option for a full background was appreciated in the abstract, the actual work of implementation was not a good experience. Given the number of wikis wanting to go that route and admins not minding that user choice could render part of the background moot at wider settings, we met as a project team and decided to reverse course on this design decision.
You will have the option to set a banner backgr…
Welcome to the future of Fandom
Welcome to the future of Fandom.
By now, you’ve probably noticed that we have a new logo and new colors in our global navigation bar, along with a new color for the footer at the bottom of every page. As of August 3, 2021, with the FandomDesktop rollout nearly complete and the completion of bringing Fandom and Gamepedia wikis onto one Unified Community Platform, we have officially relaunched the Fandom brand.
This page is going to take you through some of the details behind the relaunch—why we relaunched the brand, what the new brand means, some changes to the Fandom.com homepage, as well as a look at some upcoming brand-related changes that you can expect later this year and into next year.
When we rebranded from Wikia to Fandom in October 2…
Retirement of legacy designs
Hey gang!
With FandomDesktop reaching a critical milestone in its rollout, having reached all Fandom and historically Gamepedia wikis (with some special exceptions), we have begun the process of retiring the legacy designs, Oasis and Hydra.
Starting the week of August 9th, 2021, the preferences to revert to these skins will be removed. The useskin URL parameter (?useskin=Oasis or ?useskin=Hydra) will still be available for diagnosing design misalignment on your wikis until the week of August 23rd, 2021.
That’s all! Hope you all have a great week!
This Month at Fandom - July 2021
Hey gang!
July is at a close, so let’s observe our traditions and look back at the month that was…
- 1 FandomDesktop rollout
- 2 Data is Fun
- 3 Editors of the Month
- 4 A Fateful Farewell
At the beginning of the month, we started converting existing wikis from Oasis and Hydra to FandomDesktop, with the first batch being almost entirely wikis that opted in for early movement with the “I’m Ready” button. I am pleased to say that, as of writing this, all wikis except Wikia.org and esports are now running FandomDesktop as the default experience, so we are nearly 100% rollout.
The biggest releases in gaming for July weren’t releases at all, but rather tests. New World and Halo Infinite both launched tests for their upcoming full releases later this year and the …
The Month at Fandom - June 2021
Hey gang!
Summer has arrived and with it comes the promised FandomDesktop rollout. We’re so thrilled by all of the communities who have participated in the opt-in period, with more than 30% of the overall wiki traffic represented by wikis whose admins took the time to get their new themes sorted.
Let’s dive into some highlights, fun data, and - of course - our Editors of the Month!
- 1 The arrival of FandomDesktop
- 2 Pride Month
- 3 Data Is Fun
- 4 Editors of the Month
- 5 Wiki Rules and Blocking Policy Update
As mentioned, FandomDesktop rollout has begun! First introduced to you as UCP Phase 2 last February when it was in pre-production and then unveiled at Community Connect 2021 in March, the team has been hard at work building this new modern design for the …