WoWWiki levels up
Those of you who have been around for a little while will no doubt know about one of the most useful resources in this World of Warcraft: WoWWiki. If you're new to the party, let me tell you about it. WoWWiki is, as the name suggests, a wiki about all things Warcraft. From boss strategies to patch history to insanely detailed lore, if it's about the Warcraft series, it's probably on there somewhere. And if not, it's a wiki, so you can write it yourself!The occasion for this particular post is that they have just completed some major upgrades to their software and infrastructure. Here are the highlights:
- WoWWiki is now hosted in a distributed fashion across the Wikia network, which should mean more stability and less chance of catastrophic failure.
- A new default skin, which looks nice and classy.
- The OpenSearch plugin is now working again, so you can add WoWWiki as a search engine in Firefox or IE (though I still prefer Firefox's search keywords). Click on the menu by your search field while browsing WoWWiki to check it out.
- A proper sidebar menu, with links to important parts of the site. This fixes my single biggest complaint about the site, which is that it was hard to navigate.
- The sidebar is also now customizable; users can pick which widgets they want to see over there, and in what order. This is very cool.
- A new version of MediaWiki, which brings many feature improvements and bug fixes.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Badger May 15th 2008 3:03PM
Eliah: Are you sure they've upgraded something? I don't see any visible difference between the "new" site and the "old" site.
Pzychotix May 15th 2008 3:12PM
Yeah, slow news day.
@Badger: Change your skin over to the new one. I have my personal user skin which still looks like the old one, but the new one looks drastically different from the old one.
alrdye May 15th 2008 3:49PM
This isn't a "slow news day" post. This is actually very interesting to those of us who use wowwiki from time to time. I really appreciate them bringing this to our attention. ...freakin wow news crack addicts.
Badger May 15th 2008 4:38PM
Pzych: How do I go about changing Skins? Do I have to register as a Wikia user? (I'm already set up on the UESP Wiki, OblivioWiki, and Guild Wiki, in case that would expedite the process.)
Pzychotix May 15th 2008 5:26PM
Well actually, as a guest user, you should be seeing the updated skin. However, if you've only recently begun using WoWWiki, the updated skin's been up for a month or two, so there may be some confusion as to whether you've actually been looking at the updated skin this entire time.
Lab Monkey May 15th 2008 3:20PM
For some reason it now also slips through my work's internet filter. Yay!
Kirkburn May 15th 2008 3:31PM
A quick note for those who browse from work - I know many of you have to use IE6, and that the new skin does not get great performance on it (shocking, I know). We are working on the performance side, but if this is a problem for you, create an account and you can choose the old skin from your preferences.
The http://www.wowwiki.com/WoWWiki:Upgrade_early_2008 has more info.
Pzychotix, actually not :P
Kirkburn May 15th 2008 3:33PM
I meant, "not a slow news day". Been wanting to announce this for a while, but wanted to wait until most of the upgrades were done :P
Btw, we have no problem with users choosing to use the old skin if they wish. We won't be developing it further, but we also won't be removing it :)
franko May 15th 2008 5:38PM
awesome. i love wowwiki.
Calybos May 15th 2008 6:05PM
This is a HUGE improvement. My biggest gripe was that the Search box (i.e., the whole reason for coming here) wasn't always available up-top, right at the outset... and now, here it is, right where it belongs!
Well done, WoWWiki.
Heilig May 15th 2008 6:08PM
Um.
Didn't they do this like a month or so ago?
Vivified May 15th 2008 6:30PM
This is so last month...
Justin May 16th 2008 3:23AM
Now all they have to do is conform to the full ideals of wiki and it could one day be a great site... If it is opinion and un-sourced it has no business in a wiki, and that's all there is. Don't get me wrong it's good but I'm a purest I guess.
Bynde May 16th 2008 10:55AM
This eternal newb always uses wiki. It's a hellava lot easier and more encompassing than Thottbot that I used to hear so much about.
It seems like every other thing I search for at Thott comes back with that cheesey "dog ate my search results" message.