As part of our outreach for the new main page customization feature, the following wikis could be good candidates to target. They represent a range of smaller language communities where the feature could be useful, issues broadly fall around mobile responsiveness, missing/thin content, and design layout problems. These were identified by browsing the Incubator site creation log and are mostly wikis created between 2023 and 2026.

Three communities out of the 8 that we reached out to used the Starter Kit to update their main pages. Homepage layouts seen in these examples were generated using the Starter Kit and then further customized by communities: Tyap, Jju, Fula.

A few observations and feedback points from testing and conversations with communities:

• The feedback from communities was largely positive around ease of setup and reduced time required to configure a homepage. Contributors mentioned that tasks that previously took days or weeks could now be completed within about an hour using the Starter Kit.
• Communities especially appreciated that much of the HTML and CSS was already in place, making it easier for contributors without strong technical backgrounds to configure their main pages.
• Some communities also highlighted additional functionality they would like to see supported in the future, such as:
  • easier article creation workflows for newcomers,
  • support for audio/video sections,
  • representation of dialects and language variants,
  • onboarding/help guidance for first-time users.
• This was also reflected in the fact that some communities retained a few older components while adopting the new main page layouts, suggesting that communities still have specific local workflows and features they want to preserve.

A few implementation and design concerns emerged during testing:

• There is currently too much inline CSS being generated. Would suggest using templates/modules for styling instead. One of the effects of inline CSS is discrepancies in mobile responsiveness and dark mode rendering.

• Would suggest using flexbox layouts instead of tables for category sections.
• There is also a design layout issue where if content in two columns next to each other is not of similar size, the sections are displayed with mismatched heights and the layout appears visually crooked.

• One additional layout bug we noticed during testing was that if the image height overflows beyond the div element, it ends up disturbing the layout/alignment of the column elements that follow below it.

• Setting up how the main page looks is one thing, but configuring ongoing functionality is another, for example, communities may not be sure how often dynamic sections should change or how those workflows should be maintained over time.

A few workflow and platform-related issues emerged during testing:

• One bug we encountered was that final changes were published to a new page instead of replacing the intended main page. For example:
  • Final changes were published to: https://kcg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
  • While the original page remained unchanged: https://kaj.wikipedia.org/wiki/A̱gba̱dang_Ka̱zzu. I confirmed with engineers that this was a software bug and it was fixed during testing.
• We also noticed that one of the admins trying to use the Starter Kit no longer had active admin rights on that wiki and had to request temporary rights again before proceeding. This also surfaced a broader challenge for smaller wikis where administrators often only receive temporary access that later expires and needs renewal.