Forum:Community Outlook- Wikia's "New Look"

The following was posted on the central Wikia:

Wikia is making some changes to the way our wikis look!

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. Wikia is home to the most passionate communities on the internet, and we're always excited to see the amazing and beautiful sites that you're creating. Our goal is to enable you 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.

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.

Changes to Monaco
The following changes will be made site-wide over the next few weeks.

1. Every wiki will use Monaco as the default skin.
 * In the past, communities have used a variety of skins – Monaco, Quartz or Monobook. You will still be able to select alternate skins for your personal view, but Monaco will now be the default for all non logged-in users.

2. The edit bar and the content area will move up.
 * The edit bar will move to the top of the page. The content on the page will move up, to fill the area where the banner ad used to be.

3. Article pages will have ads in the content area.
 * Ads will be running in various sizes and placements on article pages. The ads will automatically be placed in text areas using the same logic that adding an image does – the text will wrap around the ads, and they won't disrupt templates or tables. Distracting movement in the ads will be kept to a minimum.
 * 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.) Logged-in users will not see any other ads on article pages – no banner ads, no ads in the sidebar, and no ads further down in the article area.

4. The logo will return to the Monobook 135x155px Wiki.png image.
 * The New Monaco logo will use Image:Wiki.png, which most wikis have been using for Monobook. The area behind the logo can be customized using a background strip image. (See the Customizing Monaco page for more information.)

5. Main pages will be redesigned to accommodate a 300x250px ad unit.
 * There will be a 300x250 ad unit at the top right of the main page. (You can see this right now on WoWWiki and Muppet Wiki).
 * The main page's content area will be set at a fixed width of 728px, to accommodate a connected banner / 300x250 combo ad. On larger screens, that means that there will be a "gutter" on either side of the main page, which can be customized. The fixed width is only for the main page – article pages will expand to fit your browser, as usual.
 * To ensure the 300x250 ad unit doesn't break page main designs, we have new column formatting tags that make that redesign fairly easy. The community team will be coming around to help admins with these. If you want to get a head start on it, check out the Help page on using the new column tags.

6. Ads will only appear on article pages, image pages, preview pages and category pages.


 * The following pages will have no ads anywhere:
 * All talk pages – including article talk, user talk, image talk, etc.
 * User pages
 * Project pages
 * MediaWiki pages
 * Template pages
 * Help pages

Timeline

 * On Tuesday, June 10th, the new version of Monaco will replace the current version. Wikis that currently use Monaco will see the edit bar move up, and ads appearing in the article pages.


 * In the following few weeks, community and content people will be helping wikis to redesign their main page into the two-column format. We will also help wikis that are currently using Monobook to make the transition to Monaco.


 * If you would like to get a head start on redesigning your wiki's main page, check out the Help.wikia page on Main page column tags.

Why Monaco?
Monaco offers a lot of advantages as our default skin.


 * 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.


 * 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.

Still have questions?

 * Forum: Wikia's New Style
 * Help with Skin Customization
 * Help with Main Page Column Tags

Any opinions? &mdash; Warw/Wick 17:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)