I have some important news. Wikia is making some changes to the way that our wikis look, and we'll see these changes rolling out site-wide over the next few weeks.
Wikia has grown tremendously over the last few years. Since our launch in 2004, Wikia has grown from one shared server to more than 6,000 communities supported by 84 servers and a nine member community team offering help from around the world 24. Wikia is home to the most passionate communities on the internet and I'm always excited to see the amazing and beautiful sites that you're creating. Our goal is to enable you, our most important customers, to build the world's best resource on every topic. Wikia provides more than free hosting and bandwidth. We offer technical support, great new features and extensions, promotional opportunities and community support. Those services are provided free for all users, with costs paid by advertisers. However, the internet ad market is changing and we have to change to keep up. Our challenge is to offer an attractive package to our advertisers, while maintaining the best user experience possible for our readers and editors: * We have to standardize the way our site looks across all wikis, using the Monaco skin for anonymous users. In the past, communities have used various skins -- Monaco, Quartz or Monobook. That's a luxury that we can't afford to offer any more, as advertisers strongly prefer a consistent look-and-feel. * Based on your feedback, we're making some changes to Monaco that return it to more of a Monobook look and feel and moves the content higher on the page. * We're going to roll out a more flexible ad server that will let us vary the size, location and placement of ads. The changes will be rolled out site-wide over the next few weeks. There's a lot of information about what's coming up on this page: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia's_New_Style . I'll hit the highlights here, and then you can read more about it on that page. The big changes will be: * Every wiki will use Monaco as the default skin but we will continue to offer choice for registered users who want to set their preferences * The edit bar and the content area will move up, replacing the area where the banner ad was. * Article pages will have ads in the content area. Logged-in users will only see one ad unit on article pages -- a 300x250 ad unit at the top right. (On pages where a 300x250 ad would disrupt a table, the ad will render as a banner ad) * The logo will return to the Monobook 135x155px Wiki.png image. * Main pages will be redesigned to accommodate a 300x250px ad unit. * Ads will be removed from many pages used by our most active users and will only appear on article pages, image pages, preview pages and category pages. Obviously, this will be a period of adjustment, especially for wikis that have been using Monobook. The community and content teams will be working with many communities over the next few weeks to help make the transition. I know that many people are attached to the Monobook skin, and I hope the new Monaco gives people more of the Monobook feel, with a number of advantages that make the wiki experience better. For example: * The Monaco skin is easier to customize to fit a particular community's look and feel. There are more opportunities to add color and images to the skin. * The page is now optimized, so the content loads faster. * Monaco is easier for new wiki users to understand. The majority of internet users still don't realize that there's an "edit" button on Wikipedia. That's because on Monobook, all the important links and buttons are written in 8.5-point type. Monaco is designed to make the important stuff stand out, like the edit button and the search box and we've seen increased usage of both. * When wikis have switched from Monobook to Monaco, they've seen huge jumps in the number of readers, contributors and user logins. As an example, Teletraan-I: The Transformers Wiki switched to Monaco in April. Comparing January (in Monobook) to May (in Monaco), the wiki's traffic jumped up 46%. Anonymous logins went up 223%, and use of the search box went up an amazing 541%. People clicked on items in the navigation flyout menus 38,000 times in May, and the number of active editors went up 51%, from 78 in January to 118 in May. Overall, we feel that the changes will improve the health and growth of the entire Wikia community by converting more viewers into contributors to make our communities more vibrant. At the same time, the changes will give us the resources to ensure that every wiki will be able to continue to count on Wikia for support and great service for years to come. Thank you for your continued support and for the amazing work that you do every day to build a great resource on every topic. User:Gil _______________________________________________ Wikia-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l
