Forum:New front page!

Forums: Helping Hand > New front page!

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Let's face it: our front page is very dated and rubbish-looking nowadays. I've been looking at some of the other wikis and I reckon we can do better. I have put together User:Fw190a8/New front page as a starting point.

Unfortunately I don't know how to get rid of the Wikia sidebar, so the boxes that are supposed to go in the right column are actually appearing beneath the main column. It's a bit of a pain because it means it's hard to see what the page will eventually look like.

I'd like suggestions for images for the slideshow, and also the information we put in the boxes like which novels to have, which this and that to have, etc. Also, general feedback!

Fw190a8 23:39, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, a recent Wikia update screwed main pages for every wiki, at least it does for in the Monobook layout. It looks better in the Wikia layout, but I don't care to use that. I fiddled about trying to fix FRW's main page, with no joy.

The slideshow seems a little, I dunno, busy to me. It may dominate or seem repetitive to regular users. I generally prefer a simpler and sedate website where things stay still. :)

Some ideas nicked from other wikis:

• Link to a featured article (that's not always Shadowdale) that's big, fully referenced, properly formatted, has some pictures, and displays exactly what we're aiming for here. This could be cycled every week or month, depending on the number we have. This should have a picture and a short summary.
• A regularly updated list of recent novels, sourcebooks, etc., with cover image, blurb, and basic current publication details, etc, with links to their respective pages. This might encourage visitors to stick in new information. This would need to be maintained by someone following the latest output of WotC, though we shouldn't try to be a news-site.
• A similar example of an older work, as a look at the past and as demonstration, like a featured article for source works.
• "Did you know?" factoids could be fun, if regularly cycled and updated.
• Picture of the day.
• Quote of the day.
• A big logo up the top for brand recognition.

BadCatMan (talk) 03:05, October 8, 2012 (UTC)

I think the slider may be a bit too big, in relation to other elements of the screen. If you could shrink it a bit (and possibly make it taller, so the Dragon magazine images don't seem squished), it might look a bit better. As for rotating "featured article" and "did you know?" boxes, I can think of way to do that automatically so that it doesn't get stale because we forget to rotate it manually.

Cronje ^{(talk ⋅ contribs)} 03:28, October 8, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback so far. Obviously the images for the dragon magazine covers aren't suitable, as we'd need to find images that were exactly 660x330. The size of the slider is not editable unfortunately.

I like BadCatMan's suggestions, but they mostly seem to involve rotating content, and the issue's just one of resources. It will stagnate if we have a period of relatively little editing on the wiki, which does happen quite often.

However, if someone could make a 'random' thing or something that automatically rotates reguarly, like Cronje suggests, that would be perfect!

Fw190a8 04:13, October 8, 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about making it random, but Wikia uses the ParserFunctions extension located on the MediaWiki site. Assuming we want to rotate it weekly, the easiest method would be to create 53 mini-articles as sub-pages of the Main Page (for the featured articles, these would be at Main Page/Featured00, Main Page/Featured01, etc.) and then use the ParserFunctions {{#time:W}} function.

{{#time:W}} returns the week of the year (this week's number is 16), so on the Main Page, just include {{Main Page/Featured{{#time:W}}}}, which would transclude the Featured## page onto the Main Page. Note that if the number is only a single digit long (1-9), it needs to have a 0 in front of it (01-09)) for the code to work.

Of course, this will take a lot of hard work. On the other hand, the sub-pages don't need to very long; they only need to include a link to the main article. So long as they're written professionally and, as BadCatMan mentioned, properly referenced, it should do well.

Then, of course, we repeat the process for the "Did you know?" box.

Cronje ^{(talk ⋅ contribs)} 05:37, October 8, 2012 (UTC)

I dunno if your request for general feedback includes a wikinoob like me, but:

I like the idea of changing the format and/or colors of the front page, even if not the contents of the page, every once in a while... it keeps my eyes from getting bored, and a change of scenery is generally a good thing. There's a lot to be said for knowing where to go to find what we're looking for, though, so maybe not too much shuffling things around; just (for example) a shift of color palette and main artwork once a month.

I'm not a huge fan of slideshows, unless it's easy to pause/stop it. I like taking my time to look, without having to manually click on the thumbnail to get the picture back when it scrolls away. And when I'm done looking at all the pics, the periodic scrolling is distracting while I'm reading the rest of the page, so I usually try to push it off the top of the page. *shrug* Probably just me.

BadCatMan is my hero, with the point about the Shadowdale article. As a noob, this is exactly what I need: one article that shows how to do all the spiffy things that the wiki allows us to do. I would be perfectly content if this article never changed. I mean, if/when you have a bunch of articles that fit this description, cool, change it up whenever... but from where I'm sitting, the value of drawing everyone's attention to a Featured Article is in having that article show off everything the wiki can do/be. Yea, experienced users might ignore that little corner of the page, but there's something for them too...

"Did You Know" factoids are brilliant. Maybe a collection of three little blurbs... doesn't have to be long. Alustriel's real name. The Simbul once hooked up with Lauzoril. Elminster was once a woman. If you can get a random script to do this somehow, then it could be three new facts every day, and there's probably two or three users who would log on every day just to read them... which means additional prompts for them to expand stubs or write new articles/comments or whatever. If they're only cycled once a week or less frequently than that, I think they would start to lose appeal for daily/semidaily users/updaters of the wiki, but maybe that's just my short attention span talking.

I totally agree that the wiki isn't a news channel, but I like the idea of having links to the three most recently published novels, to encourage us to expand the wiki. This would be a neat list to have. I would definitely check it out on a regular basis.

A quote of the day would also be cool, especially if it puts more links on the page.

Other than the factoids and the quote/pic of the day, which are probably too big of a headache if they can't be done by random script, I don't think very much of the front page needs to scroll/change... precisely because this isn't a news channel. General users come here for information, which means the goal to shoot for is to present clear and all-inclusive organization of information... the random blurbs are icing on the cake.

I don't know how scripts work here... but... can my browser execute the script each time I load the front page? As opposed to the site executing the script once per X days/whatever? So that I could just punch F5 and get a new quote and factoid? That would be pretty awesome.

Anyway, cool project, and sorry if this was just an admin discussion. :)

Wanderscribe (talk) 07:43, December 18, 2012 (UTC)

Of course it does, Wanderscribe. And I'm glad to be your hero, though I'm not sure why. :)

I had a play with the main page here at User:BadCatMan/Main Page, and looked at several wikias for ideas and education. It seemed easier to adjust the current main page rather than build a new one. I've moved both the logo and the Featured Article section to the centre column, where they can be more prominent and obvious. I also moved the Featured Media/Image upwards so it also gets a look in. Thus, all the contents, about, and community and technical pages have moved down a bit.

I've developed a "Did you know?" feature, based on that of Wookieepedia and other wikias. They say to take their trivia from the latest new articles, so I've copied that technique for now. It's based at Template:DidYouKnow. It's a manual system, so obviously it needs to kept up-to-date by hand regularly.

Thoughts, anyone? Obviously, it's a few minor changes.

Things for future work (for me, or interested others):

• Condense the contents etc. sections, perhaps horizontally, so they take up less vertical space.
• Look at code to cycle featured articles and images automatically.

BadCatMan (talk) 07:47, January 13, 2013 (UTC)