Making your wiki HTML5 compliant
We all know the internet is a series of tubes powered by the dreams and laughter of kittens. But what do those kittens eat?
They eat HTML, which is a coding language that is the building blocks of the internet. First developed by a renegade group of lawless web developers in the 1980s, the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group took initiative in the early 2000's and became the authoritative group on HTML coding practices. Their goal is to get all web developers to use a standardized form of HTML which, in turn, makes HTML all the more powerful and versatile.
- What does this mean for you? And the kittens?
Wikia is currently in the process of upgrading all of our wikis to MediaWiki 1.19. Some issues have arisen regarding some HTML c…
MediaWiki Upgrade
As you may or may not know, Wikia uses MediaWiki as our base software. This is the same base software that the Wikimedia Foundation uses for Wikipedia, but here at Wikia we run a heavily modified version of it. Currently we’re using code based on MediaWiki version 1.16.
From time to time, we sync our version with the latest MediaWiki version, which as of May 2, 2012, is up to version 1.19.
First of all: to bring you new features!
But also because every new release contains many bug fixes and performance improvements. Most of these are changes happening under the hood which are not visible to users, but help us maintain our MediaWiki installation and expand.
We started with a clean MediaWiki 1.19 and gradually applied our changes to the core co…
Technical Update: June 5, 2012
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.
- When creating a new thread on message wall, the mini editor for the message body will now start loading while you're entering the title.
- Search was showing some database query error messages. These are now resolved.
- We've made a few changes to the Related Videos module which is active on some wikis: it will show three videos (with a slightly larger, more viewable size) instead of four videos, and it will choose videos more randomly, to stay fresh.
- We've shifted the notifications b…
Technical Update: May 30, 2012
Here are the latest technical updates at Wikia. This week, our system update is happening on Thursday instead of Wednesday, so our update is a day later than usual. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.
- We're enabling Search Suggestions on our mobile site. Now, when you type a search, you can see suggested articles as you type. Click the name of an article to visit it directly, or click the "+" icon beside it to populate the search field with that title and keep typing.
- The "view full site" link will once again function in the Mobile skin.
- Our thumbnailer was not generating thumbnails for large SVG images. This is now fixed.
- We have tweaked some copy on our founder emails to prevent mail…
Technical Update: May 22, 2012
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.
- We're releasing an updated style for image sliders for mobile devices.
- When an article in the main namespace had the same title as a Category page, the Category page was displaying as the top search result in a search for the article title.
- We have fixed some wrapping issues with how the search box interacts with the AdminDashboard pages.
- Search was not returning correct results when the search query includes multi-byte characters.
- Page Layout Builder tasks were still showing on Ad…
Technical Update: May 15, 2012
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.
- We're adding the ability to zoom in on photos from the lightbox viewer on mobile devices.
- Searching for a query that includes a namespace (example: "Template:Character") will now display pages from that namespace in the search results.
- Page titles in search results were being truncated in some languages.
- Special:WhatLinksHere was giving incorrect results, most notably for videos.
- We're adding a preference that enables "go" search (clicking "search" will take you directly to an arti…
Technical Update: May 8, 2012
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.
- Significant updates to Chat (including a revamped kick/ban system) will be released to all English wikis. See our blog post for the full list of details.
- Improvements to how the Visual Editor works in Google Chrome, with bug fixes to prevent extra code from being inserted into the article in some cases, and fixes to prevent some code from being stripped out in other cases.
- The "Mark All As Read" link was not responding in the Notifications dropdown.
- Thanks to the new and improved …
Technical Update: May 1, 2012
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.
- We've added a Table of Contents to the tops of article pages on mobile, which is condensed by default. Just click the down arrow at the top of any page to expand it.
- Special:WantedFiles and Special:WantedPages were showing different results from Special:Whatlinkshere
- We are continuing to make improvements on mini-editor load times after discovering some causes of isolated lagging in the last few weeks.
- The user toolbar was not "floating" with the user while scrolling down the page…
Updates to How We Search
Wiki search is more than just a quick way to get to a particular page -- it’s also a tool for exploring, browsing, and discovering content. We know that the search tool is a critical component for any wiki, so we’re working hard to raise the quality of our search experience this year. You can expect more updates in the coming months as we adjust our interface and improve the technology behind our search results.
To kick off this series of updates, we’re starting with two simple changes that may affect how you use the search field on your wiki:
1) Exact match searches will now go to search results pages instead of to article pages.
2) If an exact match article is available for a search, it will always be the top result on a search results page…
Technical Update: April 24, 2012
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.
- Moved files related to the video migration were showing as contributions from IP addresses instead of from User:WikiaBot.
- Top Ten Lists will now have a better description and alt-text when being shared to Facebook or Twitter.
- The "show hidden categories" preference was missing from Special:Preferences; it will now appear in the "Under the Hood" section.
- We're changing the way we handle extra-wide tables in our mobile skin. Previously, you'd need to click on the table to open in a …