Changes: WoWWiki:News

Revision as of 23:34, 25 October 2010

This page is intended for news related to WoWWiki.

Recent news

20 October 2010 - WoWWiki has moved!

WoWWiki has moved! Please join us at our new site, Wowpedia

2009

23rd October 2009 – Create a WoWWiki magazine!

Print your own WoWWiki coffee table magazine with Wikia & HP's new print on demand service, MagCloud. Find out more here!

24th August 2009 – Kirkburn's BlizzCon 2009 Report

Kirkburn has written up his first-hand experiences of worgen and goblin starting areas - check it out at WoWWiki:Kirkburn's BlizzCon 2009 Report.

1st July 2009 – BlizzCon 2009 ticket contest winners!

View the winners here. Congratulations, and thanks to all who entered!

27th April 2009 – BlizzCon 2009 ticket contest announced!

We have BlizzCon tickets to give away - find out more on WoWWiki:BlizzCon Contest 2009!

27th April 2009 – Screenshot contest winners!

The winners of the recent screenshot contest (to win one of five Arthas: Rise of the Lich King novels) are now available on Forum:WoWWiki Screenshot Contest Spring 2009! Thanks to everyone who entered.

7th May 2009 – WoWWiki forums!

It's been a long time coming, but WoWWiki finally has forums :) They take over from our village and Warcraft pumps, and should hopefully make discussion (and life) a lot easier. Visit them at Forum:Index, and find out more about them on Forum:Welcome to the forums!

1st May 2009 – WoWWiki and Xfire in-game browser!

Fresh from a partnership with Xfire, we are proud to announce that WoWWiki will serve as the default in-game web browser for Xfire while playing WoW. That’s right, no more alt-tabbing, throw away your second monitor, close your laptop, put your pants back on... er, you get the picture. Visit the forums for more info!

30th April 2009 – WoWWiki upgrades: now on MediaWiki 1.14!

As part of WoWWiki continual upgrade plan we are now running the latest stable release of MediaWiki, and have also seen several new feature releases over the past few months. Please see WoWWiki:Upgrades for more info!

27th April 2009 – Screenshot contest time!

Not only are we nearing 75,000 articles, but it's time for a contest :) We're running a screenshot contest on wowwikievent.wikia.com, where you can win one of five Arthas: Rise of the Lich King novels. Enter and see if you can win!

2008

12th November 2008 – 65,000 articles and counting...

That article count just keeps rising, and WotLK isn't even out! Tomorrow is the big day, and hopefully we will be able to cope with the influx of visitors ... the past few weeks have been record breaking for the wiki :)

29th September 2008 – WoWWiki has shattered the 60,000 article barrier!

Last count put us in the 63,000 range. To all of the editors who helped us reach this impressive number, thank you!

25th August 2008 – The WoWlympics have ended - who will win WotLK beta keys?

Check back in a few days when we announce the winners of the 2008 WoWWiki WoWlympics! Visit WoWWiki:WoWlympics for details.

18th July 2008 – WoWWiki and WotLK information...

The NDA has been lifted! You can now add anything from the beta. Thank you for waiting patiently for this day to arrive :P
Update: we now have portal dedicated to WotLK up! See Portal:WotLK.

17th June 2008 – Monaco 3.1 has gone live!

This is the new default skin for most Wikia wikis decribed in Wikia's New Style. If you see any bugs, please report them at the Village pump.

12th June 2008 – New search engine!

WoWWiki has got a new internal search engine. Find out more on WoWWiki Searching discussion page. If you've got any feedback or notice any bugs, please do let us know on there.

15th May 2008 – WoWWiki upgrades - what's new?

WoWWiki's upgrades are mostly finished, so perhaps it's time to take stock of what's new?
- Major upgrades are in place.
- Many new extensions are now active.
- The new "Monaco" skin is of course active.
- The OpenSearch plug-in for IE7 and Firefox is finally fixed! Go to your browser's search box and add us!
- Our user database has merged with Wikia's - you can use your account to log in to Wikia wikis.
- The main page portals have been overhauled with a cleaner design and new functions.
- Many other little tweaks around the site to improve performance and usability.
As ever, feedback is always welcome - please visit the village pump!

2nd May 2008 – Upgrade status!

As you may have noticed, WoWWiki has been undergoing major overhauls. If you want to find out more about what has been going on, please visit WoWWiki:Upgrade early 2008. We hope you like the changes!

28th March 2008 – Site stats update!

Now that we're upgraded, I think it's a good time for a stats update - 55,000 articles, and rising! As a result of the patch we also broke our daily pageviews record, now standing at over 5 million! We have even broken into the top 800 websites according to Alexa. Congratulations all round!

27th March 2008 – WoWWiki has been upgraded!

WoWWiki is now running on MediaWiki 1.12 - visit here for more details.

14th March 2008 – SXSW panel audio is up!

The SXSW team has posted a link to an audio podcast of the recent panel (see below) - you can download it here.

8th March 2008 – WoWWiki and Wikia Gaming at SXSW!

Kirkburn here! I'm out at SXSW in Austin, Texas representing WoWWiki - check out more info here and see the Massively report on the discussion panel I spoke on yesterday!

29th February 2008 – WoWWiki upgrades underway!

The wiki will be getting various upgrades over the next few days and weeks with changes all over the place. If you see any problems, please report them on the Village pump!

7th February 2008 – Instance boss pages changes!

We've been making a couple of changes to boss pages - the instance navigation can now normally be found via a drop-down list at the end of the NPC infobox. Note that this site uses some JS, so we recommend turning it on if you have disabled it.

17th January 2008 – Another milestone reached!

We've broken into the top 1,000 websites according to Alexa, and recently hit 3 million pageviews in a single day! Nice work :)

2007

31st December 2007 – Happy New Year from WoWWiki!

Here's to another year of Warcraft and WoWWiki! If all goes well, the WoWWiki upgrades should occur very early in the new year.

29th November 2007 – Can't find your guild page?

Remember, all guild pages now follow the format Guild:Guildname (Servername Location)

21st November 2007 – 51,000 articles!

Not only have we hit 50,000 articles, we're now well beyond it!

1st November 2007 – "WoW patch info" box!

On the left column you can now find a box with useful links about upcoming WoW patches - currently it has links to several Patch 2.3-related articles!

30th October 2007 – 45,000 articles!

We hit 45,000 articles a few hours back! Thanks to all contributors

Previous news

WoWWiki Cited for its success by CIO Magazine (3 Jul 2007)

WoWWiki was cited by the founder of Wikipedia as a successful example of what a Wiki can do for online collaboration. See [1].

BlizzCon 2007 Sponsorship update! (14th June 2007)

Tusva and Kaydeethree have been chosen to represent WoWWiki and Wikia at Blizzcon! Congratulations!

BlizzCon 2007 Sponsorship! (7th June 2007)

oWWiki and Wikia are sponsoring two WoWWiki contributors to attend BlizzCon 2007 in Anaheim on August 3-4. Take a look at the 2007 BlizzCon Invitation for qualifications and information on how to nominate yourself. Don't delay, the last date to add yourself is next Tuesday, June 12th!

Wiki and server update (6th June 2007)

As WoWWiki is now on Wikia servers, you may have noticed a few changes around the wiki, especially the improved reliability. Coming up, we will be receiving an upgrade to MediaWiki 1.10 and a user account merge with Wikia. More details on the latter will be coming soon!

Looking for foreign language editors! (10th May 2007)

Playing WoW in a language other than English? Interested in contributing to a World of Warcraft wiki in your language? There are communities on Wikia's foreign-language sites that are being formed... check out the sites for Chinese, French, German, Hungarian, Polish , or Slovak. If you're interested in starting a World of Warcraft wiki in a language other than the ones listed here, leave a note on my talk page. -- Rustak 21:30, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

New admin (7th May 2007)

Please welcome the newest addition to the WoWWiki administrators, Teomyr!

Wiki upgrade complete (5th May 2007)

WoWWiki is now running on MediaWiki 1.9.3. See the village pump for more information! Kirkburn talk contr 12:37, 5 May 2007 (EDT)

WoWWiki moving to Wikia! (1 May 2007)

Over the past few months, I've been thinking a lot about how to keep up with the needs of the WoWWiki community. I'm really proud of how WoWWiki has grown into a valuable resource for all World of Warcraft players, and want to make sure that it can continue to grow. As you've seen, I've had trouble keeping up with server issues, problems, and getting the upgrades and extensions that are needed to make WoWWiki better.

I've looked at a few options on how to solve this over the last month. When Jimmy Wales and Gil Penchina offered to let us move the wiki to Wikia, this seemed like a natural fit and I accepted. These guys have a record of treating communities well and running a great service, and I'm going to stay involved to help make sure that they deliver what our community needs.

Some more details about this are on the village pump! -- Rustak 03:06, 2 May 2007 (EDT)

MediaWiki updates and upgrades (19th April 2007)

The wiki is currently undergoing software changes and updates. This will result into multiple maintenance downtimes during the week. However, the MediaWiki version should be fully upgraded to 1.9 within 10 days.

On a sidenote, multiple changes have already been done to the wiki interface. Email authentication is now necessary to create an account and the editing interface has been made clearer. We hope you like them! --Ady _s 03:44, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

2.1.0 up for testing! (15th April 2007)

Patch 2.1.0 is now open for testing. You can now check out the complete release notes as well as a huge undocumented changes list! --Ady _s 03:44, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Main page overhaul (1st April 2007)

The Main Page has had an overhaul!

We have added a Featured Article (FA) section and expanded the WoWWiki news section. In addition, the many of the links have been reappraised and in some cases, altered. We hope you enjoy it, and we appreciate any feedback you may have on this or any other part of the site! Kirkburn talk contr

We hope you enjoyed our April Fools, "MeoWWiki"!

New WoWWiki guideline (29th March 2007)

A new guideline has been created! See WoWWiki:Signature. Kirkburn talk contr 06:31, 29 March 2007 (EDT)

Favicon (28th March 2007)

We have one! See http://www.wowwiki.com/favicon.ico

If you're not seeing it in IE, don't worry, it may just take a while. For FF users, visit the above link, reload it, then come back here. It should then appear! Kirkburn talk contr 22:23, 27 March 2007 (EDT)

New Admin (17th March 2007)

Please welcome the newest addition to the administrator ranks, Baggins!. Kirkburn talk contr 19:23, 17 March 2007 (EDT)

The State of the Wiki (February 2007)

In a bit of good news, the wiki will soon be updated to Mediawiki 1.9.2. The recent slowness has been very frustrating, we know, and we've been looking at reason as to why it occurs. We are attempting to simplify the template usage for the moment to reduce load. Hopefully these changes will help until we find a better solution! Kirkburn talk contr 20:37, 26 February 2007 (EST)

Update - though the update has not yet occurred due to other commitments, we have fixed much of the stability problem by reducing the number of special template calls, such as to {{exists}}. Kirkburn talk contr 19:19, 17 March 2007 (EDT)

Wiki upgrade (January 2007)

Tonight the wiki's server was upgraded with more RAM - hopefully as a result we will be able to cope better with the loads from people wanting Burning Crusade information! If you have any trouble, please mention it on the Village pump! Kirkburn talk contr 17:00, 15 January 2007 (EST)

Addendum - we know the wiki has been experiencing some stability issues recently. We are looking into the cause of the problem, and hope to find a resolution soon. Kirkburn talk contr 01:26, 11 February 2007 (EST)

New Administrators (December 2006)

I cordially invite you to congratulate the new wave of admins!

Admins, I expect you to do your best and always think before doing! -- Kirkburn (talk) 20:20, 21 December 2006 (EST)

Official WoWWiki IRC Channel (December 2006)

For all talk WoWWiki, visit the new official IRC channel, set up solely for your WoW + Wiki needs :P Several of the admins frequent the channel, and you are invited to discuss issues with us or notify us of important developments there! -- Kirkburn (talk) 20:20, 21 December 2006 (EST)

Visit: chat.freenode.net, #wowwiki

Early Dec '06 Performance Problems (December 2006)

I finally got through to Rustak and he says he thinks he's fixed the performance problems everyone has probably been noticing. He's been pretty busy, so he hasn't visited WoWWiki recently and his monitoring scripts were not working right. --Fandyllic (talk) 4:17 PM PST 6 Dec 2006

Burning Crusade policy (October 2006)

Material pertaining to the beta of the upcoming expansion can now be posted freely on the wiki with some limitations.

Please, no screenshots of unreleased content, and no datamined screenshots. Anything you could or can view in the alpha/beta is postable, as long as no exploits were used.

-- Kirkburn (talk) 10:47, 18 October 2006 (EDT)

Recent policy and guideline changes (September 2006)

Deletion policy - there is no longer a separate termination policy. There's no real difference for you people. The speedy deleteion policy covered all the special cases that the termination policy outlined; we're just reducing confusion with this change.

Fanfic policy - The only thing we require now is that fanfic be about WoW and not mix in other gaming universes. Everything else was moved to optional advice in the fan fiction guidelines.

Do-Not-Post policy - Non-English content is now DNP, with a few possible exceptions outlined in the policy.

--Mikk (T) 09:04, 26 September 2006 (EDT)

Guidelines

Image guidelines have been created, with helpful tips on how to pick image format, handle compression, transparency, background coloring, etc...

Fan fiction guidelines have been created as optional practices for writing fan fiction. (It mostly consists of the removed portions of the fanfic policy, reworded as hints rather than rules).

MediaWiki 1.7.1 Upgrade (August 2006)

Rustak has upgraded the MediaWiki software to v1.7.1, which brings with it a number of changes.

See MediaWiki Quirks for problems arising from the upgrade, along with workarounds where possible.

New WoWWiki admins (August 2006)

Please congratulate Kirkburn and Mikk on their promotion to admin. Now you can bug them instead of me! --Fandyllic 8:31 AM PDT 30 Aug 2006

Main Page Updated! (August 2006)

The look of the Main page has changed to the winning design among several proposals on 25 Aug 2006. We hope you like it.

Main Page Update! (August 2006)

The look of the main page will be changing in the next week or so based on the winner of a few proposals. Please see WoWWiki:Main Page Dev 4 for a preview.

2005 and previous

Lore (June 2005)

The Lore section has tons of info about the history, characters, places, and creatures of the Warcraft universe.

New Chat Info (June 2005)

WoW Festival 2005 (Feb 2005)

WoW Festival 2005 was April 22-24. It is sponsored by Rush3d.com and promises to bring out a number of players and community related websites.

http://www.wowfestival.com for details.

New Chronos Library (Jan 2005)

Chronos - a new UI Library has been added to the Front page.

Server Performance Issues (Nov 2004)

The popularity of the wiki caught me a bit off guard; I had to scramble to a bunch of last minute software upgrading and cache setting-upping. Things are working fairly well though; you'll notice a large performance boost if you log out if you're just browsing, and log in just to edit. Also, make sure that your links/bookmarks/etc. look like http://www.wowwiki.com/Main_Page -- not www.wowwiki.com:8080 or /index.php/ (those will still work, but the first form will be the fastest). I'll probably do a hardware upgrade here in the next week or so as well. Thanks for all the contributions! -- Rustak 07:00, 23 Nov 2004 (EST)

Index of Wiki Templates (Nov 2004)

An index of Wiki Templates has been started. Please add to it as appropriate. -- Goldark 09:51, 23 Nov 2004 (EST)

Moved to the "About WoWWiki" namespace (WoWWiki:), July 2005. - Laisren

Server List (Nov 2004)

Complete server list up at : Realms list. -- AlexanderYoshi 01:10, 23 Nov 2004 (EST)

Categories (Nov 2004)

Categories have now been added to many of the gameplay-related pages. Please try to categorize any new pages from now on, using existing catgories where possible, but adding new ones if required -- Goldark 12:11, 22 Nov 2004 (EST)

(Note: Meta:Categories moved to the About WoWWiki namespace (WoWWiki: ) June 2005. -Laisren)

Money Icons (Nov 2004)

You can now add money icons to your posts! Money Example -- OwlBoy 09:27, 22 Nov 2004 (EST)

Spell detail

I've added a new example Spell detail page, at Warlock Spells > Shadow Bolt. I'd like feedback on it, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be nice to have a spell detail page like this for every spell and ability. If so, we could mock up a template on it for future use. -- Jat850 19:29, 21 Nov 2004 (EST)

Classes

There's a new look to the Classes page thanks to Jat850. Many other fantastic contributions by various people. Keep it going! -- Goldark

Hunter, Shaman and Paladin classes added too. All classes now have a basic first page at a minimum, but there's still lots to do. A new Racial Traits page has also been added. -- Goldark

Druid, Mage and Rogue guides are up! Thanks Metaphaze, Goldark, and Sarf! --Alex

Brand new guides for the Warrior, Priest and Warlock. Go check em out! --Alex

Templates

Added some Templates (not Wiki templates) to act as a framework skeleton for the class and quest information -- Goldark

Guilds

Lots of news going on at the Guilds page!

API

A lot of people are working on the World of Warcraft API. Its looking GREAT! --Alex

The Cosmos AddOns list has been started, feel free to help contribute to the documentation!

Newbie Guide

The Newbie Guide is online and ready for perusing! Thanks Vlad!

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 {{Main page news item
-|3 July 2010 &ndash; Cataclysm content cavalcade!
+|20 October 2010 - WoWWiki has moved!
+|2=WoWWiki has moved! Please join us at our new site, [http://wowpedia.org/ Wowpedia]
-|2=Busy days here on WoWWiki - now the [[World of Warcraft: Cataclysm|Cataclysm]] beta has begun, we are filling out the wiki with masses of new content. If you wish to help out, and all help is appreciated, please see our quick guide '''[[Help:Updating for Cataclysm|here]]'''.
-}}
-{{Main page news item
-|6 June 2010 &ndash; Fun with Captions!
-|2=WoWWiki and '''[[WoWWiki:Caption fun|Caption Contests]]'''? Well, yes and no... yes you can make your own captions, but it's currently just for fun. No prizes, unless you count the laughter from users you know and don't know as something you would treasure!
-}}
-{{Main page news item
-|4 June 2010 &ndash; Wikia interview with Magelo!
-|2=[[w:c:gaming|Wikia Gaming]] has interviewed [[Magelo]] about their Gear Planner: learn more about how to gear up your character on '''[[w:c:gaming:Magelo|Wikia Gaming]]'''!
-}}
-{{Main page news item
-|1 February 2010 &ndash; 80,000 articles and counting!
-|2=So, we hit [[Special:Statistics|80,000]] articles a few weeks ago. Go go editors, go! Thank you all for your hard work. '''[[Special:Signup|You too]]''' can [[WW:BOLD|edit]] WoWWiki to make it the best WoW resource on the web!
-}}
-{{Main page news item
-|3rd January 2010 &ndash; WoWWiki has over 80,000 articles!
-|2=WoWWiki has started the New Year out by setting a new record: now the tally consists of more than 80,000 articles, thus strengthening its position as the #1 specialized wiki all over the planet! And, with the upcoming third WoW expansion, ''[[World of Warcraft: Cataclysm|Cataclysm]]'', new heights await to be reached. Thank you editors!
 }}