Even though it's only been a short while since we've officially launched the Modded Minecraft Wiki, we've already prepared the first large update to the website, which further expands available documentation options and improves the user experience.
Let's take a deeper look below!
🤝 Community documentation
Community-sourced documentation is now available! Any person, whether they're a mod author or not, can document their favourite mod with no coding knowledge required in a few simple steps. Community projects will show up in the browse tab just like regular ones, and unofficial documentation will always be explicitly marked as such to avoid confusion in case of inaccuracies.
➡️ But why?
While first-party official documentation can be realiable and is easier to maintain, there are certain cases where it's more feasible to let the community document mods instead.
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Documenting old mods (writing new docs or migrating existing docs from other wikis where the license allows it)
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Documenting mods where official documentation is unavailable
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Documenting other versions of mods / forks
➡️ But how?
Normally, wiki websites store their documentation files in a database and allow anyone with an account to make changes to content, usually via a built-in editor. However, this requires constant attention to changes being made to the website in order to keep it free from potential vandalism and spambots.
In addition, our website takes a different approach to how documentation is sourced, as in that we do not store any files locally. Instead, everything is stored in mods' own GitHub repositories and changes are controlled by mod authors / other repository maintainers.
Hence, our approach to handling community contributions will differ a little. Rather than the changes being done directly on the website, we (the Wiki team) will be maintaining a GitHub repository containing all community documentation hosted on the Wiki, where contributions can be made to.
While this may sound a little difficult to handle for users who do not have experience developing mods / using GitHub, we have prepared a thorough guide to make sure anyone can contribute to the docs easily regardless of their experience.
➡️ Who maintains community docs?
Changes to community docs will be reviewed by Sinytra's newly-estabilished Wiki team, also called simply "Wiki Editors", who will have direct control over what changes are made to community documentation. The good news is - anyone can join! Kinda. We'll soon public an application form for people who wish to be active maintainers.
For everyone else - don't worry! It's not necessary to be an editor in order to submit changes - the team is only in charge of reviews.
➡️ What does this mean for mod developers?
Official and community-sourced documentation will be stored in different places and will remain independent. As a result, there may be cases where mod devs looking to document their own mod will discover it already being documented by the community under the Wiki editor team.
There's multiple options you can take here:
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Use the community docs as a basis for official documentation
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Keep official and unofficial docs separate (e.g. yours may contain actual specs of mod content, whereas community docs will add useful tips and handy setups)
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Merge community docs into official docs. Feel free to reach out to us if this is the case, and we'll be happy to assist with moving the docs from the community repo into the mod's own repository.
🌐 Website translation - a call for help
The wiki's user interface is now fully translatable!
If you speak a foreign language and would like to help us out localizing the website's interface, you can do so on our Crowdin page, where translations can be submitted publicly. (again, no coding knowledge required!). In case your language is not shown, please let us know on our Discord and we'll enable it for you.
We'll be very thankful and contributions, and significant onces will be credited in the wiki's README on GitHub, as well as the "About" page.
🪄 User interface improvements
Documentation pages
Sticky sidebars
Sidebars now stick to the sides of the page when scrolling, so that you don't need to always return to the top of the page to navigate away.
Table of contents
Pages with hidden metadata will display a table of contents in the right sidebar instead of mod meta information. Additionally, mod metadata information will remain completely hidden on content pages (e.g. block and item entries) to leave more space for meta information. Mod metadata can be displayed anytime by navigating to "Mod homepage", located on the top of the left sidebar.
We'll be adding more customization options for documentation pages in our upcoming update, which will give you more control over what types of sidebars are shown.
Author dashboard
The author dashboard has been updated to make it easier for new authors to register projects to the website.
There is also a new diagnostics dialog to help resolve issues with repository access in cases where the wiki can no longer access the repository or the repository has been moved to a different account.
Show page preview
We've upgraded the project registration modal to reflect new community documentation options as well.
Show modal preview
Project error page
We've added a new error page that will be shown in case a documentation page cannot be accessed by the website. Instead of a generic error, we'll let the user know what the cause is and give them the option to report this to the mod author on their repository.
Show error preview
Summary / TL;DR
✅ In this major update, we made the following changes:
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🤝 Support for community documentation - guide
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🌐 User interface is now fully localizable - translations can be submitted on our Crowdin page
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🪄 Improvements to UI and error handling
👁️ What to look out for:
- 📝 Wiki community docs maintainer signups are opening soon!
An announcement will be posted on our discord with further details once they're open.
🏗️ Notable features coming in the next update:
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🔀 Branch support - maintain docs for multiple mc versions at the same time
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⚙️ More options for docs page customization via metadata
Something extra for the curious!
Shhh, looks like there is "one more thing" in the works... Ever wondered where moddedmc.wiki leads to? Well, why not go find out now?
Special thanks goes to @IMB11 for helping me out with acquiring the domain! ❤️