Forum:MegaProject: Arise - Main Page Revamp

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KeybladeSpyMaster - I do it for my family, my home, my friends! I do it for her! TALK - Welcome to Spy Force One. - 11:10 AM Sat, April 12, 2014 MST Hey, guys! As part of MegaProject: Arise, it was decided yesterday to revamp the Main Page. We would like the community's opinions on what we should change and how to revamp the Main Page. What should we have on the Main Page, and how can we make it more appealing so that we can increase community activity? Discuss!

Discussion

KeybladeSpyMaster - I do it for my family, my home, my friends! I do it for her! TALK - Welcome to Spy Force One. - 08:01 PM Sat, April 12, 2014 MST So I think one of the things we need to change is the Command Board. It should be more prominent and more updated in telling the community what needs work, so that way, passing and new visitors can feel like they have something to contribute to.

TheFifteenthMember Yes. You're creepy. I can't say we'll miss you while you're gone, so it'd be best if you did go. We all win that way. — TheFifteenthMember 09:31, 13 April 2014 (UTC) Yeah, the Command Board definitely needs to be revamped. My only improvement I would make is perhaps add more icons (hearts, KH game icons etc.) around the place to make it more image-filled, like Pea said. How we do that is up to you guys because I have no ideas. EDIT: I think we should put this mini-project on hiatus, until our magazine, podcast and LP start to release so we can incorporate them into our design.

Pea14733 Hey, it's their world. They get to decide what to do with it. — 14:06, 13 April 2014 (UTC) How about we make it looks like that New Game/Continue menu in the games? Or maybe we'd like the "start menu" theme.

KeybladeSpyMaster - I do it for my family, my home, my friends! I do it for her! TALK - Welcome to Spy Force One. - 10:45 AM Sun, April 13, 2014 MST I would rather not put it on hiatus, only because I would rather not let this happen again. As for the design, I really like the idea of the Menu theme like the Pause Menu. How would it work? Would we have all the headers as the menu items (Featured Article, Command Board, etc.) and have each part appear upon clicking it? Because that sounds like a) multiple pages or b)Javascript. How much are we willing to change? The whole thing from scratch, or just the main page contents? I don't know, all these things are coming to mind as I type this....sorry if I made it so confusing. But I like a menu theme like Pea suggested.

TheFifteenthMember I like white. I find it goes well with yellow, but only if you want it to. — TheFifteenthMember 20:01, 13 April 2014 (UTC) It'd be hard to design it like the title screen as we can't squeeze all of the information onto the main page into a few words. I think we should get rid of the "Did you know..." section since it gives a misleading impression of the Wiki (which doesn't feature heavy trivia) and possible the "Quote of the Moment" too. That leaves the following bits: "Welcome" space Featured Article Featured Media Mirage Arena Trinity Archives Current Happenings, Command Board and Helping Out (which can maybe be integrated together or linked in some way) SEIWA. Then we will also have: Let's Play Magazine/Podcast Now, which parts should go in the main part and which parts on the sidebar? One idea I have is merging all community events into one box: "Join our busy community events!" with pictures and subtitles for the MA, LP and magazine. Here's a visual of what I mean (although the real thing will be much better than the scrap I made on paint). I think it's good since it uses less words and more images and saves a lot of space that would have otherwise been wasted on individual boxes.

KeybladeSpyMaster - I do it for my family, my home, my friends! I do it for her! TALK - Welcome to Spy Force One. - 06:35 PM Wed, April 16, 2014 MST For sure, we need to put a bigger emphasis on the community. Maybe "Did You Know?" should be moved to the community page? My thoughts on the design would have been to have the tabs on the left (Instead of "Items", "Journal", etc., it would be "Community", "Trinity Archives", etc.) and have each tab open a page of sorts on the right where the content usually would have been, and put the information there. However, that seems really complex, so I don't mind if we don't do that (sniff, sniff) :). The rest that you posted, FM, seems okay, and I like merging the Community links into one box. I'll see if I can work up a draft. I don't know about the sidebar, because those links seem to be ignored very easily. Maybe there should be a way to rework the sidebar so that it's more prominent?

TheFifteenthMember YOU DON'T HAVE ANY BLOOMIN' HAIR, YOU LAGABOUTIN' SPOUTIN' POUTIN' TROUT!!! — TheFifteenthMember 20:23, 17 April 2014 (UTC) Just to clarify, by "sidebar" I meant this on the right; not the navigation bar on the left. I really think we should just get rid of the "Did you Know?" since it's more suited for the Keyhole. My qualm with having tabs on the main page is it'd hide a lot of links and information to the viewer at first glance. Can someone highlight the problems with the current main page so that we ("we" being me) know what we need to improve? I understood from Pea that we need to use more images and less text. Anything else?

KeybladeSpyMaster - I do it for my family, my home, my friends! I do it for her! TALK - Welcome to Spy Force One. - 08:44 PM Thu, April 24, 2014 MST Ok, so I've taken the time to take some notes on OneNote (love that program) of what I think we could do. Now, by no means is this the master list of things we should do, nor should we do them all. This is more ideas to get the juices flowing. These ideas come from what I think we should do just from looking at the main page, as well as ideas thrown around in the original Revamp Discussion from a couple years back, and some thrown here. Make Command Board, Helping Out, and Clean Up of the Month more visible/useable Coordinate with the Traverse Town reconstruction? Make more interesting/appealing in general (visually) Current Happenings Mirage Arena Remove "Did you know?" Portals? Games Characters Media Merchandise Community Area for Let's Play, Magazine, and other community projects Traverse Town is a must visually! Now, I've also taken notes from looking at some other wikis. Portals (KHFanonWiki, Bulbapedia) Move Trinity Archives to the a smaller area (sidebar) (FinalFantasy Wiki) Use images in sections (Disney Wiki) Make more prominent the Wanted and make a Popular articles list (Strategy Wiki) Use a background color on the actual page (Bulbapedia). Use bigger font size (Strategy Wiki) Make Navigation Bar more visible/bigger (Strategy Wiki) Game Portals (Zelda Wiki) Merge Command Board/Helping Out/Clean Up of the Month (WikiBound) Center welcome Banner (?) Remove navigation menu, move to top (NIWA) Move sidebar down to even out with the rest of the content (ties in with centering the Welcome Banner (Kingdom Hearts Wiki (Spanish)) Again, these are just notes of what we could do. What do you guys think?

Reopening, for reals...

Alternate title was Better Homes and Gardens: Wiki Style. Whew, it's been a while...About two months to be exact. >_> Since the magazine and podcast are well on their way, how about we get this project rolling? I know Keyblade has waited very patiently for some contributions. I'm sorry my two cents, for whatever they are worth, are late. ^_^; Alrighty then... First, I'm up for a total wipeout of how the main page looks now in favor for something new. Judging from the last main page discussion and from what you guys have said on here so far, everyone seems okay with that. I'm also game for slashing "quote of the moment" and the "did you know" facts. Quotes are cool, but unless we want to tab them with something else, I don't see a real point for them. Especially since we have other things that could replace it and they are mentioned in the articles. In general, though, I don't think tabs on the main page are good for pretty much the reasons 15 has said. Moving on, I'm liking 15's idea on grouping the community events into one box. That's really simple, easy to understand, and includes those points. Now for Keyblade's previous bullet list: Pertaining to Command Board, Helping Out, Cleanup of the Month, and Traverse Town: Is there a way we could take the first three topics and merge them with a part of the Traverse Town revamp? Visually appealing: Most of this will come with our inclusion of more images/new page layout. Current happenings seems rather redundant to me since we have the Command Board and Cleanup of the Month all hinting at the community. If we incorporate Traverse Town into this, I think we can remove the Command Board, Helping Out, Cleanup of the Month, and Current Happenings. Or, could current happenings be discussed in the Trinity Archives? Portals: I like the idea. However, having a number of portals for game features seems unnecessary to me. Our navigation bar on the far left side of the screen seems to cover the gaming features. Trinity Archives to smaller sidebar: Yes! I couldn't agree more. Kryten has the coding for that idea over on his userspace. Images in sections: More images in general, supported by the necessary subtitles, are better for advertising than walls of text. I think of the main page as that: an advertisement or commercial. We have a short time to show off certain features. More people would rather look at/remember an image than reading a book of text just to know that our magic articles need help. Wanted and Popular articles: (Wanted articles) Bullet list is good, or if we can figure out how to unite the Traverse Town page into this, I'd rather we do that. Popular articles: is there a way to determine which articles have been popular? Background color: Color would liven the page up. However, nothing too radical, please. Nice and clean. It doesn't have to be a "safe" color like white, black, light colors...just something that isn't distracting. Bigger font: For stressing certain parts? Absolutely. Navigation bar: Personally, I'm quite content with the size our current navigation bar is. Large side areas, such as the navigational bar, and the page looks distorted/out of proportion. Game portals: I'm really digging this idea. For starters, this would save us from having to waste/put more portals about each game. Merge command board/cleanup of the month/helping out: If we are unable to do the Traverse Town idea, this is definitely a good idea. Centering: Sure, if we want. Worse case scenario is we change it back. Depending on how we set up the other sections, this could be good or bad. Removing navigation menu: Eh...I think the navigation box is good where it is now- on the far left side of the page- instead of actually being a part of the page. Xion4ever Never forget... — 03:42, 17 June 2014 (UTC)