User blog:MisterWoodhouse/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 background or a full background, depending on how you wish to express your wiki identity. Full backgrounds will have a number of image options, including tile, fit, and full. We look forward to seeing what you do with the new options.

The entire team would like to give a big thank you to all the wiki admins who reached out with actionable feedback on this issue. Understanding your pain points with the implementation and how you felt about trade-offs was very helpful to our decision-making process.

Announcements on historically Gamepedia wikis

The Announcements tool is now available on wikis which were originally on Gamepedia. This tool allows admins to send an announcement with text and a link to any registered user who participated on your wiki recently. It is very effective for spreading news and inviting editor input on important wiki topics.

Due to the split nature of the notifications system (more on that after this), the notifications for Announcements will remain in the Fandom column of the notifications module, regardless of their source.

As part of this work, we have moved the tool from /announcements to /wiki/Special:Announcements and updated it to FandomDesktop styling. Your entry point from the Admin Dashboard has been updated and any bookmarks you have for the old URL will redirect to the tool’s new home. Note: There is currently a bug with the redirects that we're working to resolve.

Notifications unification

As noted earlier this year, our notifications systems require unification on the back end to get them merged within the new design. While we intended for this work to begin later this year, after doing a deeper dive into the scope of the work and the effort required, the work has been moved to next year.

EmbedVideo on Fandom

One of the most highly requested extensions from Gamepedia is now available for use on Fandom wikis. That’s right, the CATS team has finished the work required to enable EmbedVideo across the entire unified platform, allowing you to embed video content from 24 popular services on wiki pages.

More to come as our teams finish up their final FandomDesktop rollout tasks and move on to more projects, feature enhancements, and bug fixes.

Will "MisterWoodhouse" Kavanagh

Fandom Staff

Will was the Global Communications Lead at Fandom, but no longer works here. Before that, he was the Community Manager for Gamepedia and the Gaming Community Manager for Imzy. Outside of work, he hangs at the beach, explores breweries, plays golf, and lifts big weights for fun.

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