Main Pages for Fandom
Main Pages are the central points to focus on for many communities. They are often, but not always, popular landing pages where readers enter a community (and the greater Fandom network). They create the first impression for some visitors, and are the navigational crossroads for others. However, there is a lot of tradition around Main Pages that may not be ideal choices for today's wikis.
One thing that takes getting used to is that Main Pages are not nearly as "main" as many think they are. In fact, Main Pages might be the most popular pages on some communities but are very far down the list of others. With global search engines pointing to individual articles on a wiki, Main Pages are often not the primary "entrance" into a community's a…
Images that engage
Images, when they're available, should break up text on a page to make it more interesting. Thinking about how and why images are used is important, as all the imagery of your pages build reader impressions for your communities. Compelling images can also uniquely inspire and engage your readers to contribute useful information.
All pages have a purpose. Images should be applied carefully to support that purpose. Some pages are articles, but most that aren't should be for the purpose of linking or leading to articles.
- Identify and prioritize all the messages of the page. What is the intention of the page you're editing? Is the page primarily meant to navigate or describe your community? Or is the page meant as an informative article?
- Define ho…
Portable Infoboxes now offer more community customization options
For a while now, we've wanted to fix many of the outstanding issues with one of our widely-used but under-developed products: Portable Infoboxes. With the help of the Vanguard volunteers, many of our communities over the years have adopted these adaptable templates to put their best faces forward on all platforms. This has been especially apparent with the rise of mobile devices, where we've made recent changes to improve the look and feel of infoboxes for a clean user experience.
As useful as these infoboxes have been for mobile presentation, there was a lot of room for improvement to help communities show off their data and content in the way that they wanted to. So, in addition to fixes and a new look on mobile web and the Fandom app, we…
Becoming a good wiki citizen
Last week we talked about the journey from reader to editor. The next step is building your skills, reputation, and relationships on your chosen wiki.
Our heavy contributors are the hearts and souls of our communities. They probably started as readers and have been sharpening their wiki skills for some time. Knowing the territory, rules, tools, and terrain of a community establish them as local guides. If you want to be an expert user, there are so many things you can do as a contributor that can improve the community!
The best way to get noticed and respected is to contribute quality edits. Making small improvements and "riffing" off someone else's contributions is good. You're building together, not replacing their work entirely with your …
Town Hall recap - Building Strong Communities
FANDOM is all about empowering users to have the best possible experience on their Fan Journey. Our most recent Town Hall put the spotlight on building strong communities, a major part of making sure that readers and contributors alike have a great experience on the site.
As with all of our Town Hall sessions, we answered participant questions and shared tips and insights from FANDOM staff members. Here’s a recap of what was discussed!
- Seeding and Growing a Healthy Wiki. Doug Trein (aka TheBlueRogue) kicked off the event by sharing best practices for creating and building a new community. He outlined strategies for eye-catching styles and main pages, detailed how categories are key for community organization and mobile main pages, and explai…