Recent Fixes
- "Add New Page" was capitalized in navigation dropdown for consistency
- "User_blog_comment" readded to Special:AllPages and Special:RecentChanges
- ThemeDesigner page preview was cut off on default expanded content wikis
Fixes in Development
- "Current" navigation panel should only open by default to logged-out users
Development Updates:
Platform
- [MediaWiki Update] MediaWiki will be updated to 1.43 over the course of the coming months
Traffic
- [Data Tweak] Backend script update caused data dip on January 2nd
UXFCP
- [Product Tweak] Global navigation will be tweaked based on user feedback
- New global navigation design added to Fandom homepage
- New global navigation design coming to FanCentral, Video, Trivia, and Universe pages next week
Hello, hello, hello, my lovelies! Welcome to the first tech blog of 2025! I hope that everyone enjoyed their holiday period and had a great time, be it with loved ones, just doing what you've always wanted to do but never found the time for, or something else! I'm happy to see you've found your way back to these bi-weekly update blogs though! For those who are new to the series, the Technical Updates is a blog posted every two weeks to highlight a selection of bugs that were fixed, projects that are being worked on, experiments that are or will be running, and notable releases. It's also a good place to ask questions and give actionable feedback in the comments.
That all said, this first blog will be a little bit different than normal. First of all, we broke the "bi-weekly posting" commitment, as the last one was December 13, and then we went into a code freeze. Last week was deliberately skipped for the updates, as there wouldn't have been much to report on so close to the break. Secondly, our product teams are still hard at work to define this year's product vision and commitments. We'll be reporting more on that when we can, but for now you'll see the effects of this in that I won't have much to say yet for team decisions and releases. And thirdly, as you've undoubtedly seen with the banner in the down-left corner, Fandom is updating the MediaWiki software the platform runs on, which means that a lot of engineering capacity is tied up doing that. All these reasons combined may make this blog a bit empty, as most of the work has been on the backend. However, let's still see what I can tell you about more user-facing fixes.
Recent Fixes[]
- "Add new page" in the navigation dropdown was capitalized for consistency to now be "Add New Page".
- "User_blog_comment" namespace was missing from Special:AllPages and Special:RecentChanges.
- ThemeDesigner page preview was cut off on wikis with default expanded content.
Fixes in Development[]
- The "Current" navigation panel opens by default to logged-in users on Discussions if they have a screen that's at least 1640px wide. This is supposed to be the behavior only for logged-out users, so we will be rectifying that.
Development Updates[]
Platform Team[]
- Product Support Owner: Antonio
- [MediaWiki Update] Incoming MediaWiki update from Version 1.39 to Version 1.43: You've probably noticed the banner in your down left corner, but we're gearing up to update our MediaWiki software to the 1.43 version. For those unaware, MediaWiki is the software that powers wiki editing on Fandom (and other wiki farms), and like any software, it needs to be updated from time to time, which often brings performance and security improvements, as well as new features. We will update the Help page with a list of changes in the coming weeks.
Traffic Team[]
- Product Support Owner: Jenny
- [Data Tweak] Backend script update caused data dip on January 2nd: This may not have been noticed by everyone (especially since only those with access to Special:Analytics could've seen this), but we still wish to explain for transparency sake why there was a dip in the data on January 2nd, 2025. On our end, we changed to use a new pageview event script, which allows us to keep track of pageview data, some of which is also available to admins. After the release we saw drops beyond the forecasted impact and realized this was caused by the way the pageview scripts were cached in combination with how the release took place. Rather than waiting for an adjustment that would've happened over time, we released the fix while keeping the old scripts in place to make sure the pages that were cached were still picking those up. At the same time, we have also done some purging on top-wikis to force the refresh of the cache. The combination of these measures caused the situation to stabilize. While everything is working correctly now, it does mean that the data from January 2nd is missing some events and can't entirely be trusted.
User Experience (UXFCP) Team[]
- Product Support Owner: Lostris
- [Product Tweak] New navigation tweaks: A big part of the UXFCP Team's focus during the first weeks of the year will be on tweaking some of the functionality of the new navigation. The user feedback we've received will be at the center of these efforts. Beyond tweaks, over time you will also see some new experiments and improvements aimed to provide more useful functionality (and to also fill in the current emptiness). Definitely stay tuned, and if you still have some feedback to share about the navigation, please do so in a detailed manner that lets us know why you have a certain opinion and how you like to see something be changed.
- [Release] New navigation releases: While the new navigation was released to users already on December 11th, as of this week, it's also added to the fandom.com homepage and starting next week, the last pages -- FanCentral, Video, Trivia, and Universe Pages -- will also receive the new design.
That's it for the start of this year! Per usual, if you encounter something that feels off about the platform, please report it by sending in a bug report, reach out to your Community Manager, contact the Product Support Owner on their Wall/talk page, or just simply sound off in the comments here. Remember to include a link to where you're experiencing the issue, a screenshot if it is something visible, as well as steps to reproduce your issue. As always, thank you for helping us by continuing to communicate. Happy editing, everyone!
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