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Introducing the Layout Builder -- Open call for community testers

Sarah Manley Sarah Manley January 11, 2011

If you are a wiki founder or admin, you may know the pain of creating a consistent look across your wiki pages. At times you may have thought, “I just wish it was easier to make all of the character pages look the same!” or “I have a great new section I want on all episode pages, but adding it manually to each is going to be so annoying.”

To help solve these problems, we are working on a first version of a tool called Layout Builder.

Sample layout a user would see when creating a new character page
Sarah ManleyAdded by Sarah Manley

The Layout Builder is a tool for administrators that allows you to create page layouts for specific types of pages. For example, let’s say you create a new character layout. Your community members can now create a new character type page instead of a blank one. They just fill in the character name, bio, or whatever else you’ve defined and *boom* -- a new character page formatted according to your layout. Even better, if you decide to switch around your layout later, every page based on that layout will automatically switch around too.

In order to create the best tool possible, we’re going to open the layout builder to testing by the community. This is a great way to provide early feedback and direction to this feature, which you may see on your wiki in the future. You can see the tool in action on our layout builder wiki at Special:Layoutbuilder.

We are very interested in admins testing the layout builder on their wikis, so we (and you) can see the tool in a real situation. If you are interested in participating in testing it on your wiki, please leave a comment below with a link to your wiki. You must be an admin on your wiki to request the feature and we highly recommend discussing this with other admins first. If you are not an admin, you can still test it on the layout builder wiki or read further on this help page. Enabling it will not affect existing pages, and it can be disabled at any time.

Layout Builder is brand new and still under development, so it will likely have some bugs. Please report any you find, and add your feedback in the comments below. We’ll be closely monitoring and responding the comments. We are also interested in general feedback as to whether you think this tool would benefit your wiki and community.

We would like to give all of the layout builder testers a big thanks in advance for your help and please remember, this is just the first version of a brand new product!



Update: Due to the huge response from the community, we now have a ton of layout builder testers. To ensure we can properly assess all of your feedback, we are going to close the testing to new participants on Friday January 14, 2011 at 10am PDT. Thanks!


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Retrieved from "http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Sarah_Manley/Introducing_the_Layout_Builder_--_Open_call_for_community_testers"
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319 comments


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  • Kirkburn

    Sorry, we're not taking more testers at the moment - but it likely won't be too long until we open it up again.

    A quick update on what's been going on: we've been fixing a variety of open issues over the past few weeks, and we're working on more. We are also reviewing what features we should add next - had a lot of very useful thoughts from this thread, so thanks :)

    If you have further suggestions or feedback, I recommend Special:Contact now - it should get to the right people (in this case, generally myself).

    by Kirkburn
  • DarthCookie

    This is a feature I would like to test out, I am the only admin on http://www.bakinglife.wikia.com.

    by DarthCookie
  • Lord0din69

    I'm interested in this. I'm hoping this would provide a better visual aspect and easier work flow for new editors to mediawikis. I've been using the Infobox templates to aid users in creating new pages so I want to see how this turns out. http://zomg.wikia.com/wiki/ZOMG_Wiki

    by Lord0din69
  • 17morgm

    Hi, I'm the only admin on http://wikihow.wikia.com. I'd like you to add the layout builder to my wiki, because I need to guide users to the right way to format their how-to articles. Frankly, I have had this wiki for more than three years now, and I need the layout builder urgently. I'm glad that you've created it!

    by 17morgm
  • Kyosei

    I just wanted to point out that you won't see the "Formatting" and Static" tabs unless you have the Rich Text Editor enabled in your preferences. I tend to leave this disabled as I do not like using it but means I can only use/see the "Formatting" options but can't add any of the "Static" options unless I turn it on. Is it technically feasible to see both without having to enable the Rich Text Editor?

    by Kyosei
    • Kirkburn

      When you have the rich text editor disabled, you should see the PLB 'add item' dropdown and the normal MediaWiki editor toolbar. Are you seeing different?

      by Kirkburn
  • Godisme

    Small bug I have experienced. Sometimes when i am trying to make a layout, the the add item menu freezes up such that pressing on any of the options does nothing.

    by Godisme
  • Sxerks

    Here is some feedback on options I'd like to see:

    -being able to use parts of the page title throughout the layout.

    An example layout, and example page. These are based off of this createbox, the template it uses, and an actual page.


    Bug- entering text that is meant to display in a "pre" doesn't work, see the above layout as an example.

    by Sxerks
  • Godisme

    Any chance I can get the layout builder switched to a different wiki? I have been using it on Ninja Gaiden Wiki but due to the lack of editors there, I have switched over to building up The Lost Room Wiki. I won't be editing Ninja Gaiden Wiki much right now so I won't really be providing feedback unless I can get this switched.

    by Godisme
  • Sarah Manley

    Thank you to everyone who has volunteered to test this product. We are going to close applications for new wikis to test it so we can focus on fixing bugs and incorporating the feedback you provided. We will keep the blog open for bug reports/feedback, but will not longer be enabling it on new wikis.

    by Sarah Manley
  • Zanimum

    http://happymeal.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

    Happy Meal Wiki desperately needs this feature, pretty please!

    by Zanimum
  • Lanica

    I'd be interested in playing around with this on [[1]] if you're still looking for testers.

    by Lanica
  • Kirkburn

    Good morning! Just a quick update to let you know: we're still working on the layout builder, fixing reported issues, and improving the way it works. Please do continue to report anything odd (or amazing!) that you find - it has been incredibly useful hearing from you all :)

    by Kirkburn
  • Man for the job

    My wiki may like it but I am not sure the buracrat will agree ( by the way I am an admin )

    by Man for the job
  • Eladkse

    Ignore this post - I've had better ideas.

    by Eladkse
    history
  • Chicken7

    Please allow the Windows Phone Wiki to participate. I already tried to create an easy method like this for new users here: http://windowsphone.wikia.com/wiki/Windows_Phone_Wiki:Adding_your_app

    I have huge plans, and this would help greatly! Cheers, Chicken7 >talk 12:35, January 31, 2011 (UTC)

    http://windowsphone.wikia.com/wiki/Windows_Phone_Wiki

    by Chicken7
  • Wolfs shadow

    I would like my wiki to participating in testing. here is the link-http://thefancypantsadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Fancy_Pants_Adventures_Wiki#

    by Wolfs shadow
  • YuriKaslov

    A major problem I just noticed -- I can't do a normal "undo" of a revision.

    It takes me to the "inputs" screen, and I have to remove the bogus info manually.

    by YuriKaslov
    • Devilmanozzy

      Wow, I didn't notice this. Good catch. Yeah they need to fix that too.

      by Devilmanozzy
    • Yyp

      That will hinder most users, but those with Rollback rights can still use it to revert the edit. But yeah, the vast majority of users will be negatively affected by this, so it needs addressing.

      by Yyp
    • Kirkburn

      Yeah, good catch indeed. We'll look into it.

      by Kirkburn
  • Devilmanozzy

    My last words on this Layout Builder as I basically stop its use at wiki for the sample I was doing.

    At this time there are two issues that stop me from using it(they have been noted in my comments and others already but anyways):
    - I need the option to pick "not applicable" and not have a field show up in the final result.
    - I need to be able to edit in wikicode after the layout is used to add more such as headlines and fields only exclusive to the article.

    Anyways, its not a bad tool and it has lots of promise and potential. But it really is not ready.

    by Devilmanozzy
    history
    • BulldozerD11

      Yes has potential but also issues

      I created a layoutpage to create redirects as an option but they dont work as redirects due to the extra code on the page so it gets counted as a article and a soft redirect.

      by BulldozerD11
    • Kirkburn

      Devilmanozzy: agreed, those are two bits of functionality we plan to look into (especially the former, should be relatively simple).

      BulldozerD11, why a layout for redirect pages? What kind of things do you put on it?

      by Kirkburn
    • Devilmanozzy

      I have to say, this Beta testing overall has went much better than previous ones. One reason for that is how open this beta testing has been with the community. I don't care to say too many bad this about the whole new skin thing that happened months ago, but if its beta had been more open like this, it would have been smoother sailing through it. Just saying.

      by Devilmanozzy
    • BulldozerD11

      @KB I just tried it out as a quck way to create a redirect by offereing it in the list of new page menues. Mainly because search nolonger offers a red link to create new pages from. Also it made the function more visible to new editors if it was offeed in te list of possible pages.

      Now the toolbar can be customised the create new page is more accessible so its redundant for me.

      Note the ist of options if you have several layouts it pushes the add button off the visible page making a scroll own necessary for every page created. How about compressing the entries a bit (perhaps 2 col list )? and move the button to the top of the pop up ?

      by BulldozerD11
  • Sulfur

    I don't see an obvious way of seeing which pages use which layouts. Am I missing something here?

    by Sulfur
  • Yyp

    This seems to be a genuinely good and useful tool. Straight forward enough to use. Good interface & help pages. Good idea with the "Use this page as a basis for a layout" link below the edit window. Saves a lot of effort. Creating pages with it works as I intend to work (bar silly mistakes from myself). Only had one bug so far. When I add a template into a paragraph input box, it causes </p> to be displayed on the page. Remove the template & </p> disappears.

    It would be nice if you could use a single input to add several things. For example on the Darker Than Black Wiki's episodes pages, there are 2 seasons: The Black Contractor and Gemini of the Meteor. The season is listed in the infobox which (obviously) is at the top of the page, but there is also a navbox for both seasons at the bottom. It would handy if it were possible to add the title in the infobox and the nav box with one option in a drop down menu. Don't know if that is technically feasible, but if it can cut down on the amount of fields users have to go through, it would be good.

    It would also be good if after a page was created, you could edit it normally. I don't like that you have such limited options for editing an article created with the builder. I want it to be for creating normal articles and then edit it without all those forms/fields.

    by Yyp
    • Yyp

      Problem when you use the Input Box to add content to an infobox that has headings which are designed to disappear if left blank : if you do not fill it in, the section that is supposed to be hidden is still visible. The comment "Edit this section to complete this page." is written in the section.

      The same problem for sections that might not apply to a particular article. They do not hide but instead say "Edit this section to complete this page", despite them being left empty on purpose.

      Additionally, when I view the diff page for an edit to an article created by a layout, it says the following underneath the diff:

      Invalid tag extension name: <span class="error">expansion depth limit exceeded</span>

      When I click Undo, it does not show be the diff by default and there is no Show Changes option. And I cannot actually undo the edit except by hitting revert - normal users would be hindered in tackling vandalism & poor edits

      by Yyp
      history
    • Kirkburn

      Thanks, useful notes!

      by Kirkburn

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