User blog:Gardimuer/Recent Wikia changes

If you've been paying attention to things around the site in recent days, you will notice that Wikia has been making many changes. Some will affect all viewers, others may only be noticeable to a few people.

Profile headers
Visit your profile page and you will notice an entirely new layout for the top. This is a change that Wikia announced in July, and it is now active across all wikis. You can read more about customizing this profile header at the staff blog on Community Central: "New Profile Design Now Live Across All Wikis"

No more red category links
Wikia announced back in June that they would change the way category links look, and now the change is active across all wikis. What this means is that when someone adds a nonexistent category to an article, the category link at the bottom of the page will show blue instead of red like it used to. This means it will be more difficult for people to notice when they misspell a category name, or when a needed category has not been created yet.

This change has aggravated a lot of people because it makes category maintenance much harder. For more information about Wikia's reasoning and the community responses, see the following links:
 * Technical Update: June 28, 2011
 * Forum:Category redlinks not red
 * Technical Update: August 16, 2011

Wikia has made it clear that they will not allow administrators to change the link color back to red for an entire wiki. However, individual editors can choose to revert back to the red color for their personal viewing by adding something to their Wikia.css. If you want to do so for BioShock Wiki, then simply place the following code in your Wikia.css: .newcategory { color: #CC2200 !important; } You can also correct the category link color for all wikis you visit by adding the following to your Global.js on Community Central: $(function { $('.newcategory').addClass('new'); });

Admin Dashboard
This is a change that will only be visible to administrators, and it affects the layout of all Special pages. The change is meant to give inexperienced administrators a better idea about how to maintain a wiki. If you are curious, you can find more about it here.

New editing interface coming
Many of you may have noticed this already if you edit other wikis. Wikia is planning to launch an improvement for the old Rich Text Editor, and has already made it the default editor on some wikis (such as Community Central). The new editor is much more streamlined, but it still has kinks that need to be worked out. You can find more information about it in the following blogs:
 * Try the New Wikia Editor
 * Updates to the Editor Redesign

Wikia Chat
Wikia has created a web-based chat extension that is a bit like IRC and a bit like the old shoutbox from Monaco. For wikis that have it enabled, a box shows up in the sidebar with a link to the chat for that wiki and a list of members currently in chat. Unlike IRC, the Wikia Chat extension automatically links to your user account, so your user name and a link to your profile show in the sidebar within chat. You can also use wiki format for links and other things within chat. See the following pages for more information:
 * Introducing Chat
 * Chat is Now in Wikia Labs

Each wiki community can choose whether or not to enable chat on their site. BioShock Wiki currently has it turned off, and we already have an IRC channel that serves much the same purpose. However, I am open to suggestions about whether or not we should turn it on. If you think we should turn it on, or that we should not, please leave your opinion and reasons in a comment below.