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)

KeybladeSpyMaster - I fight for the Users! TALK - - Greetings, users. System is up, and ready for user input. - 08:34 PM Wed, June 18, 2014 MST CODE 0xKHWV001: SYSTEM START UP Super excited to have this going now! Ok, now I regret all many bullet points, because it's a little hard to respond to all those things. Oh, well, my mistake. I'll try and group some of the ideas here. I'm sorry, but fair warning: it's going to be an essay of sorts. First, I guess we're game for starting the main page from scratch. I'll try a draft on one of my project pages, since the Traverse Town Project has slowed down for now. We can pick that up later. Wiki News and Projects: Includes Trinity Archives, Command Board, Helping Out, Clean Up of the Month, Wanted/Popular Articles, Current Happenings, Traverse Town Probably the biggest part of the entire page is what to do with these sections, some of which seem redundant. During the June Roundtable, I brought up the potential to bring back Clean up of the Month as part of the Traverse Town Project: Reconstruction, which the wiki accepted. I think it'd be great to merge and add the Command Board and Helping Out sections to Traverse Town. Thus, we'd make Traverse Town a hub for getting involved and getting work done, which I think is a great idea. If we do merge the sections to Traverse Town, then it makes the merging them together irrelevant. Plus, we'd get more traffic to Traverse Town, which could get these sections more relevance and help get work done. Regarding the Wanted/Popular Articles, it'd be good to do something similar to the Clean-up of the Month and rotate a list from Special:WantedPages. As for Popular Articles, such a thing exists in one of the pages of Traverse Town, so we could not add this to the main page. I feel we should remove it all together, because, as you noted, there isn't really a good way of determining popular articles. Trinity Archives, I think, definitely belongs on the side, especially since it already takes little space as far as text goes. Current Happenings seems to be the Wiki's version of the Trinity Archives (which I guess is more game related), which seems redundant because the Trinity Archives does the same thing anyways. Navigation Bar: Includes Navigation Bar, Search Bar, Toolbox, Community Bar When I said remove the navigation bar, I actually meant moving it to the top of the page, as in the top of the site. Much like Wikia or, as in the example, NIWA, have done it. I concur, the ideas related to these items should be rejected. It's not that I don't want them, it's that they're more an entire-site issue, and we're only dealing with the Main Page. However, I feel that we should keep in mind that, that some of the items on the Navigation side bar are often ignored or forgotten. Like the main page and Traverse Town, the side bar should probably be made somewhat more prominent/emphasized so that we use the items there. But that's for a different day. Portals: Self explanatory. Portals were a popular topic/addition in the previous discussion. What kinds of portals do we want? Content portals like the Fanon Wiki has? Or Game Portals like the Zelda Wiki has? The Fanon Wiki has these for their portals: Characters, Enemies, Stories (which would be replaced with "Games"), Worlds, Weapons, Abilities, Images, and Templates. I think Xion expressed support for Game portals over Content portals, which makes sense. Like she mentioned, the content items have their own links on the side. The games do as well, but they're a little more hidden. I personally prefer the Game portals. If it was noticed (and I'm sure Xion remembers, because she was the one who deleted it), I made a timeline image (of sorts) as a image map that linked to the games. Would that be effective? (NOTE: If we do that, we'd no longer have a use for this article, not that it ever really took off, no matter how many times I tried) What else do we want from these portals? General Aesthetics and Content Layout: Includes Font sizes, Color theme, Background color, Images, Content Layout Pretty general. Definitely a slightly bigger font, so that the words we use on the page are less like an article. I like the idea of using a background color, it should be a color that matches the current theme (in this case, it'd be some light gray of some sort). I think it should be much like the Bulbapedia home page, as far as that goes. Definitely more images all around, which seems to be an agreed-upon point. As far as content layout goes, I'll elaborate on this below. I'm really sorry to keep extending this, but I feel we need to get all the cards on the table (I'll be honest, you won't tell from the timestamp, but I've been wording this response for a good part of the day). So, here are the existing contents. Tying with the Content Layout, I think it's time to determine what we want to keep and what we're hacking down to inexistence with the Keyblade. I'm open to adding new content/sections, if we want to. Welcome Mirage Arena Featured Article Featured Media Featured User Helping Out Command Board Trinity Archives Current Happenings Did you know? Quote of the Moment SEIWA Now, here are some of my ideas regarding the Content Layout part. Much of this is in agreement with FM and Xion's suggestions. Welcome: Center it across the top of the page. Mirage Arena: FM suggested making this a community events box, which I totally support. It would contain the Mirage Arena and the Magazine. FM said to add the podcast, but I feel that's taken care of by the Magazine link, since the Podcast is hosted in the Magazine. Perhaps we'll leave space empty but ready for other events, since I know we'll soon have a competition and Let's Play, right? Featured Article/Media/User: Definitely keep. We're getting this up and running, and I think they work fine right now. At the end, these sections only work as long as we keep voting. One thing is moving the Featured User section out of the side bar. It's a...little squished. Of course, I could just stop writing long descriptions, but I don't think we want to go there.... Helping Out/Command Board/Current Happenings: Please see above, especially if you somehow skipped the first part of the essay. I feel we should kill these sections off, because they're a little redundant, and recreate them as part of a new section called Traverse Town. I'll elaborate on that below. Trinity Archives: Again, see above. Only suggestion is to move it to the side. Did you know?/Quote of the Moment: Kill it, kill it with fire. Especially "Did you know?". This was a concern in the previous discussion, the fact that the trivia facts would quickly be memorized, which is true. I don't even notice it anymore because I already know everything that could show up. As for Quote of the Moment, I personally love it still, but there's no use for it. So, I feel I will just give up the fight and let it die, unless you guys want to keep it. It's just a fun thing. Unlike the Did you know?, Quote of the Moment actually has a lot of sources to get content at (see all the Quotes pages). SEIWA: I don't know what to say about this. Kill it? But then, what about the alliance that, from what I gather, the wiki helped create? But it's dead. But we made it. But, but, but. It's like choosing between Donald Trump and Rahm Emanuel, it's hard for me to choose one of the two (thanks, Jon Stewart, for that comparison). Traverse Town: A new section I'm proposing. I feel that if we move Command Board/Current Happenings/Helping Out to Traverse Town, then they no longer have a use on the Main Page, at least not separately. So, I propose we re-write these sections as part of one section called Traverse Town. The section would introduce the Community Portal, give information on helping out, and what not. I feel that this would probably take up a good part of the space, though. Holy cow, that was a lot. Again, I apologize for this wall-o-essay (Dang it, should have submitted this to my English teacher before graduation...). I look back at this post and wonder if I had this all bottled up somewhere secret in my head all this time. I hope we can get this rolling now so we can get people here and interested!

I've given up on trying to comment on every point. That's just a waste of text/space. So, I'll just make comments, in no order. The navigation bar and everything else on the left side of the page is, in my opinion, best left where it currently is. Call me old-fashioned, lazy, etc., but cramming all that information on the main page is taking space away from other things we could put on the main page. If we want to feature/add a couple/few of these "hidden/forgotten items" from the left sidebar, we can. However, I think adding most/every main point is unnecessary. Portals: Yup, I really dig the gaming portals like the Zelda Wiki has. Pure awesomeness. The KH Fanon Wiki's portals are examples of things I personally think just clutter up the main page/are better off left in the navigation/left side of the page. As for the timeline page, I say we hold off before deleting that. Once we get some of these major projects done, then we can tackle revising that page. Bloody manga articles... I really like how the Zelda Wiki did the images: small circles with an appropriate image. We don't need an elaborate/huge image for these portals...Least, I don't think so. Background/"fancy fonts": Sounds fine to me. Content: This is pretty much a list of what I think belongs on the main page. Welcome Mirage Arena Featured Article Featured Media Featured User (New section) Traverse Town- consisting of: helping out/command board/current happenings. This should be the forefront or the place where all our community info. should be. Remember, this doesn't have to point out every little bit the community does. Just some highlights to get people to say "Oooh! I like that!" or "Wow!" SEIWA Trinity Archives Clean up of the month: Could this be replaced by the "wanted files?" Or should the two share a box and half be clean up/half be wanted files? Xion4ever Never forget... — 04:25, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

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 15:56, 19 June 2014 (UTC) I thought the wanted files is already part of the command board/helping out. Also, I don't like the idea of having game portals. They seem redundant when the Wiki has already organised clear navboxes, search engines and categories. In most cases, if someone is looking for a particular thing, they can find it easily. So I don't think the portals are worth having. I agree with everything else.

KeybladeSpyMaster - I fight for the Users! TALK - - Greetings, users. System is up, and ready for user input. - 06:52 PM Sun, June 22, 2014 MST CODE 0xKHWV001: SYSTEM START UP Ok, Here is the draft. It isn't finished yet, I'll get to that later. But so far, this is what I've been able to do. What do you guys think?

Before I comment on Keyblade's draft, I feel like this should be said. I think we could really use some other feedback on here. We have some good ideas going between the three of us, but if we really want this to work I think having other users' input is really going to help us along. This is a pretty big thing we're doing, changing the front page. That's something a lot of people are going to see, and for some it might even be their first impression of us. This should be a community decision, not just something between [not even] a handful of users. Some might say "what makes this different from our articles or images? Everything on a Wiki is important, no matter how "small" or insignificant it seems." That is very true. However, there is something called common courtesy/decency in which you respond or help someone who is asking for assistance/a question- whatever it may be...Especially if you have it in your being/power to do so. Every single user can help on this. Even a simple comment as "Yeah, I like your ideas. Sounds good to me." or "You guys are idiots, that layout sucks" would help. Also, let it be known that, once the "new" main page has been finalized, if I hear someone comment about how they hate "something" about it, I will first check this forum to see if they commented and then proceed to politely tell them to shut up. The only reason I see people not commenting on this is: they are inactive (to be defined several sentences down), or they just don't care. If the latter is the case, I hope that is is because you aren't sure how to help out. Even then, if that's the case, feel free to say so! Someone will be glad to tell you what we could use help on. Heck, ask me on my talkpage and I'll get back to you within a day. I'm tired of hoping others will comment just from seeing this on the recent changes... I'm up for a better way of getting some action. Be it a mass talkpage heads up, which is what we used to do, or a daily IRC reminder- something. Everyone is always "online," yet no one is editing or posting feedback, which is outrageous. The same users are doing all the work and begging for input. That is even more outrageous. If you're inactive, meaning you are literally never logged on to the Wiki/can't help due to real life interferences, that's perfectly understandable. However, logging in and being here every day, Wiki or IRC? Absolutely ridiculous. I hate to get nasty and be like this, but, dang it people, this is important. We need your help. Now, about your recent draft... First, good job. That is a lot of work to do. Fifteen made a good point about the game portals, and I think the easiest way to decide this is more input determining whether or not we want to specifically feature the games. "What is it that we want to spotlight?" Is a better question for anything being on the main page, I guess. Secondly, I think the "Join us in our community events!" box should be more towards the top of the page. On the draft page, there is a mention of creating a third column? What if we decided to do that? Could we place the Traverse Town section in the middle and then fill in the surrounding space with the remaining boxes [categories]? Xion4ever Who am I? — 20:55, 23 June 2014 (UTC)