Technical Update
Recent Fixes
- Bold text distinguishable from normal text on FandomMobile
- Site notice re-classified as H2
- Account creation possible for usernames with spaces
- "User data is missing" warning for account creation with a birthday set in September
Special:FacetedSearcherror resolved
Fixes in Development
- Remove in-line newsletter signup module
- Inability to ping users on Discussions who don't have wiki edits or a special character in their username
- Wrong German Footer translation of "What is Fandom?"
Development Updates:
CTOOLS
- [Product Release] New Fandom Auth pages
Platform
- [Testing] Failover test on Wednesday May 21st, 9:00 to 10:00am CET, entire platform in read-only mode
UXFCP
- [Page cleanup] Several decluttering measures:
- Toolbar removal for logged-out users
- Popular Pages and Others Like You removal from right rail
- Removing "Fandom Trivia" from the content
- [Code cleanup] Code refactoring of the Desktop Drawer
Hey hey, here we are again! Normally this would've been the last tech blog of May, as there tend to be two per month, but hey, May surprises us with three tech blogs this year! If you read this while thinking "What is a tech blog", I got you. The Technical Updates are a blog series we release every two weeks, containing an update of relevant platform changes, products released by specific product themes, an overview of experiments that may be relevant to note, and a selection of user-facing bug tickets that got fixed (or that we're working on fixing). In addition to providing you with these insights, the comment section is also a good place for you to ask questions, give feedback on your experience, or report bugs you may have encountered yourself.
Recent Fixes[]
- Bold text is properly distinguishable again from normal text on FandomMobile. We are, however, aware that an issue with bold text remains on Discussions and Comments.
- The site notice title has been reclassified from an H1 to an H2. This change for accessibility, will help screenreaders to properly navigate the page.
- Users with spaces in their username could not create an account.
- Account creation with a birthday set in September received a "User data is missing" warning and could not finish their registration.
- The
Special:FacetedSearcherror showing up when trying to enable any features on the Semantic MediaWiki tab in Special:Preferences has been resolved.
Fixes in Development[]
- Part of the continued effort to clean up the user-experience, the UXFCP team is working to remove the in-line newsletter signup module on FandomMobile as it's just taking up unnecessary space that we want to give back.
- Plenty of users reported issues with their ability to ping certain people on Discussions. Turns out there is an issue with pinging users who do not have any edits on the wiki side, as well as users who have a special character in their username. The team is looking into a solution for this.
- Footer on German wikis shows incorrect translation of "What is Fandom?". It says "Was is Fandom?" where it should be "Was ist Fandom?"
Development Updates[]
Consumer Tools[]
- Product Support Owner: Héctor
- [Product Release] New Fandom Auth pages: Building on last Tech Blog's announcement of the registration form redesign, the Fandom Auth pages update (encompassing registration, sign-in, settings, and password recovery) also brought more UX and accessibility improvements with it. This goes from receiving an entire or partial design makeover to just having improved warning and help messages, better text contrast and other accessibility compliances, and simple header alignments and message simplification. You can read more about the changes on all the help pages related to these pages (Help:Create an account, Help:Connecting social accounts, Help:Logging in, Help:2FA, Help:Preferences, and Help:Changing your username).
Platform Team[]
- Product Support Owner: Antonio
- [Testing] Failover test on Wednesday May 21st, 9:00 to 10:00am CET, entire platform in read-only mode: A failover test aims to validate a system's ability to transition from a primary to a secondary or backup system in the event of a failure, ensuring minimal downtime. In order to make significant physical upgrades to Fandom's primary California datacenter, we need to cut off all network traffic to that datacenter during the aforementioned maintenance window. This will be the first of two tests, the second one happening in some weeks. During this time, the entire platform will be in read-only mode. If you wish to be logged in during the test, we recommend starting your session before 9am CET. Should you encounter issues where the pages aren't properly loading in read-only, please reach out to us in the
#generalchannel in Discord.
User Experience (UXFCP) Team[]
- Product Support Owner: Lostris
- [Page cleanup] With the idea that a lot of small efforts can create a big change, the UX team has been chipping away at superfluous elements to reduce page clutter.
- Toolbar removal for logged-out users on desktop: The toolbar at the bottom of the page on desktops has been removed for logged out users. The reason was simple: it was not giving any value to our logged-out users to warrant taking up space.
- Popular Pages and Others Like You removal from right rail: Another one of those small efforts to clear things up,
Popular PagesandOthers Like Youhas been removed from the right rail for logged-out users. Since the Desktop Drawer, these elements were no longer displayed, but they were still being rendered. - Removing "Fandom Trivia" from the content: And a third point for decluttering measures for our logged-out users! Now that we have the drawers and are moving our more "engagement" elements there, there is no more reason to keep hosting the trivia's in-line prompts. While they can still appear in FanCentral, or other spots on the site, they will be removed from their in-content location underneath the Table of Contents, this on desktop and mobile.
- [Code cleanup] Code refactoring of the Desktop Drawer: The UX team has been on a roll these past weeks in their cleanup efforts. The Desktop Drawer came to be through a series of experiments and adjustments building on the original code that wasn't designed to handle all these tweaks. To ensure a more evergreen experience with less tech debts going forward, the drawer code has been refactored. These are all changes under the hood, so you shouldn't notice these when they take effect next week. However, should you have some personal css in place that affects the Desktop Drawer, you may want to review it and change every occurrence of
tabwithpanel.
That's it for the issue! 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!
Fandom Staff
Lostris is a Senior Product Support Manager. When not online, she lives to travel, play roller derby, and escape the world by watching anything that has a good plot, good acting, and preferably a ton of sassy one-liners.
Click here to follow the Fandom staff blog.
Click here to sign up for the From the Desk of Community email newsletter.
Join our Official Discord server for registered editors!