Technical Update: March 8, 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.
- 1 New Features
- 2 Major Bugs Fixed
- 3 Other Notable Changes
- 4 Select Known Issues
- Created Special:CreateTopList and listed it on Special:SpecialPages for easy Top 10 List creation.
- Launched the LyricWiki Lyrics mobile app for Android.
- code was exposed on some wikis.
- phpbb forums weren’t loading properly.
- Pywikipediabot usage was showing error messages.
- Page edits via API were showing error messages.
- Additional founder emails were being sent.
- We're in the early testing phases for a new chatroom …
Technical Update: March 1, 2011
Every week, Wikia rolls out a new set of site improvements -- a varied blend of satisfying bug fixes and exciting new site features. For our many technical-minded users who like to stay aware of these changes, we're starting a new report to summarize the major developments. Our first one is right here!
Keep in mind that our system updates happen every Wednesday, so our current experiment is to release these technical overviews on Tuesdays to give you advance notice. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.
- Launched Wikia Labs. You can learn more about Wikia Labs here but keep in mind this product is still being actively tested and developed.
- Redesigned the process for creating a new wiki
- S…
Toolbar Tweaks and More
Exciting news! Tomorrow we will be rolling out a new, more customizable version of the personal toolbar -- the bar that floats at the bottom of your screen as you surf around Wikia. We hope it’s going to make it a lot easier to get to all of your favorite buttons and links.
The new toolbar is going to give you a ton of new choices. For example, you can now add tools which were not a part of the first version, such as edit, delete, move, random page, and create a page. Whereas before you could only access your chosen links from the My Tools menu, now you can add tools directly to the toolbar -- much like adding a favorite website to the bookmarks toolbar in your web browser.
Logged out users will see the two default buttons, Share and Follow…
Technical roundup
All of Wikia is now fully migrated on to Mediawiki 1.16 (yay!), so you probably have already noted some changes. Many of these are related to the upgraded software (and you can find more details here), but you also may notice a couple of design tweak as well -- a smaller global header, and clearer formatting for the Recent Wiki Activity box.miss
The global header was introduced with Wikia’s new look. Since then we have been conducting user testing and collecting community feedback, and have now released a new smaller and higher positioned global header. We hope that this helps showcase more content above the fold, while continuing to encourage visitors to explore across Wikia.
We also recently improved SEO of photos. Before, it was rare to s…
MediaWiki 1.16 on Wikia
Happy New Year to everyone on Wikia.
The first job of the year for the Wikia Technical Team is to upgrade the wiki software for the site. The software we use to allow you to edit is MediaWiki and we will be upgrading from MediaWiki version 1.15 to 1.16.1 -- similar to the version Wikipedia is currently using.
Most of the changes are to the back-end of the site, so you will experience little change from what you see now. But this version also contains a lot of bug fixes, as well as adding additional RSS feeds for watchlists and adjustments to the preferences page. There will also be a couple of other changes you might notice. For those that want the full technical details, you can see the complete release notes
Currently, we are working to ens…
December New Look Update
It's now been a month since we fully released Wikia's new skin. In that time we have been gathering data on how it's being used across Wikia, and talking to individuals and communities about the changes. Many of you may have seen that we are also using A/B testing to see how we can tweak areas of the skin to improve it further. We've been adding this data to all of your feedback from the beta testing and beyond, and working on various bug fixes, changes, and ideas for the future.
This week we added an improvement to the display of extra-wide tables. Instead of them being covered by the right sidebar, wide tables are now expandable via a light-box to the full width of the page. There are a few teething troubles with buttons showing more ofte…