FANDOM Staff Blog

FANDOM is all about empowering users to have the best possible experience on their Fan Journey. Our most recent Town Hall put the spotlight on building strong communities, a major part of making sure that readers and contributors alike have a great experience on the site.

As with all of our Town Hall sessions, we answered participant questions and shared tips and insights from FANDOM staff members. Here’s a recap of what was discussed!

• Seeding and Growing a Healthy Wiki. Doug Trein (aka TheBlueRogue) kicked off the event by sharing best practices for creating and building a new community. He outlined strategies for eye-catching styles and main pages, detailed how categories are key for community organization and mobile main pages, and explai…

FANDOM is beyond honored to be nominated for a Webby Award in the category of Websites- Movie & Film! Never heard of a Webby? Well, they honor excellence on the internet with their industry-leading international award — even The New York Times has hailed the Webbys as “The Internet’s highest honor.” Being nominated is a huge accomplishment in and of itself, and now, you can help us win! Public voting for the People’s Voice in this category is open through April 19th, so click here where you can vote for FANDOM!

This nomination couldn’t have happened without all of the hard work of the FANDOM team over the last year, and of course, none of this would be possible without you, our most dedicated fans and users. You are the building block of ever…

This blog is Part 2 of 2. Part 1 was released Tuesday and can be read here.

Earlier this week we introduced you to the Fan Journey. It’s an idea that’s at the heart of making FANDOM a complete and inclusive destination for all fans. There’s a lot more product development work left to be done in order to realize that vision — and 2018 will be a big year for figuring out just how to best do it.

Over the years we’ve released a lot of features designed to reach a wider audience. We’ve had different apps, different products, and different ways to contribute and view content across platforms. But as each one of those solved different problems, a common theme emerged: the site had many disconnected and often confusing access points. The video below…

This blog is Part 1 of a two part series. Part 2 will be released on Thursday.

FANDOM has evolved pretty significantly over the last few years. We’ve talked a lot about being a complete destination for fans, an idea that continues to inform the way we build our products. Modernization work in 2017 was a big part of reaching a wider audience, and that work is continuing throughout 2018. But what exactly does it mean to be a complete fan destination?

That question is at the core of what we’re talking about today. Most people reading this are wiki editors, and editing on wikis is where their passions and interests are rooted. But there’s also a whole fan community out there looking for all sorts of content, and FANDOM strives to make sure that …

FANDOM empowers you to add video directly into your articles, bringing them to life in ways that text or even images alone can't always accomplish. And as video becomes a more dominant part of audience expectations online, people will stay on your community longer if they have the right videos to watch.

That's why video is becoming an increasingly important part of FANDOM's content. While Featured Videos have been a major driver behind this shift, communities also have the ability to add additional videos anywhere they want on the page. Communities like Thomas & Friends and Tardis have taken full advantage of this for several years. By now, they have vast numbers of videos all across their content.

These video-rich communities are a great exa…

From the beginning to the end of 2017, the average desktop page load time for FANDOM wikis decreased by 46%, thanks to all of the modernization development over the last year. That was only the tip of the iceberg, though, and our team has been hard at work on some significant performance improvements on the mobile site. We've already seen a great deal of success, knocking several seconds off of the loading times for users on mobile data connections.

So how did we get there?

When measuring loading times, there are multiple factors to consider. These are the primary ones, for both mobile and desktop.

• First Meaningful Paint. This is the moment when major page elements above "the fold" (defined as the immediately visible parts of the page) are lo…

FANDOM is a diverse and complicated community. We all have different likes, dislikes, and ideas. We also come from many different places and cultures, and are varied in race, sexuality, gender identity and many other beautiful ways.

Most of our differences don't cause issues on wikis unless someone is involved who objects to our group. For example, age and religion don't generally have a strong influence on how someone edits on a wiki, but we have seen problems with people prejudiced against those groups. Be careful not to blame the target of attacks in such cases, and remember that a varied and interesting wiki comes from a varied and interesting community. You don't have to like everyone, or even approve of them. But that doesn't stop you…

So you’ve recently started editing on a wiki about a topic that interests you, and you’ve decided that you’d like to take the next step and become an admin. If there are active bureaucrats, you may be able to simply contact one of them and state your desire to become an admin. But what do you do if there are no active bureaucrats or administrators? If you’re eligible, you can adopt the wiki.

Adopting a wiki means that you are given bureaucrat and administrator rights to help you improve the wiki and its community. With these rights, you can customize the wiki’s appearance, delete spam, block vandals, and give admin rights to other editors in the community.

A wiki with no active bureaucrats or admins (no edits in the last 60 days) is eligible…

FANDOM's video offerings have grown tremendously in the last year. Last May we began introducing Featured Videos to high traffic wiki pages, and our Studio Video team is producing a slate of editorial and original video programming, such as the recently-launched first episode of FANDOM News. The growing video program at FANDOM continues to position the site as a top destination for audiences seeking more knowledge and depth about their favorite fandoms.

To bring video to an even wider audience, we are excited to announce the launch of the new FANDOM Video home page. This new page provides fans with a go-to destination for the diverse range of video content FANDOM has to offer. The kinds of video you can find on the new destination range fro…

I mentioned recently that one of the first things to do on a new wiki is start writing pages. For design help we ask that you have at least 50 pages on the wiki, and that's a good number to aim for. But 50 is a big number! How are you going to get there when all you have is a blank wiki?

The key thing is to get started. Don't let the task overwhelm you, just pick a place to start and get that one thing done, followed by the next one thing, and then the next. It's much easier to write in bite-sized pieces rather than trying to take on too much too soon.

The main page of any wiki is a critical one. It's your doorway into your wiki and making it interesting, attractive, and easy to use is an important early task. Of course, you aren't going to ha…