Technical Update: October 2, 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.

New Features

• The "Wikia Bar" will only appear for logged out users. The Wikia Bar will feature links to popular pages on the Wikia network as well provide a space to message those who are not currently logged in.
• You can now embed video on your wiki from twitch.tv.
• The video landing page (as seen on the James Bond wiki) will be added on Thursday Oct 4th to all wikis with the Related Videos module. It can be accessed by following the "Videos" link, found on the "On the Wiki" tab of the wiki navigation. It displays all videos on the wiki, and allows you to sort by a number of parameters.

Major Bugs Fixed

• Previewing an edit will now show the window at the correct width.
• Viewing a user's page will now show their awarded badges.
• User blog listings (ex. User blog:DaNASCAT) were appearing in search engine results even if the user never posted a blog or the user name had since been changed. We have made a change to those pages' structure and those pages should begin dropping off of search results.

Other Notable Changes

• The previously announced layout and navigation updates go into effect for all wikis:
  • Site width is increasing to 1030 pixels, and more of the background will become visible at the top center and bottom center.
  • The newer style of wiki navigation will be enabled on all wikis.
  • The Wikia header and bottom toolbar will span the full width of the browser window.
  • A few very minor layout bugs may remain after the initial update, and we will continue work on those as needed.
• Redlinked usernames will now link to the user's empty profile page rather than an edit window for that user's profile page.

Select Known Issues

• On occasion, parts of Community Central's interface are showing text in a different language than the user-specific language (ex. an English user seeing the text in Portuguese). If you see this happening on your wiki, please let Wikia know.
• Special:WantedPages is showing links to Message Wall and Archived Talk pages
• CreatePage is breaking if you use the name of an existing page - it is supposed to error, and tell you to change the name.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave them below. And if you have additional bugs to report, please send them to us via Special:Contact.

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