Forum:Mainpage MKII

New design
Played a bit with the main design for better integrating the blog news: User:Porter21/mainpage - let me know what you think. Feel free to play around with the respective pages for the main page preview (news, intro, helping out and contents in my user space) if you want.

As for the changes, I've moved the stuff about helping out from the intro box to "helping out" and replaced it with image links to our portals (somewhat unrelated, but I wanted to that for a while, I think it helps ease of navigation and you'll see similar setups on most of the recent wikia skins). Rearranged contents and news as discussed (although I think it'd might be better to simply have the contents in a horizontal instead of a vertical list). -- Porter21 (talk) 14:02, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks great! Ausir(talk) 16:39, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, although I'm not yet happy with the "Contents" section. With the three column setup, it looks overcrowded/confusing on lower resolutions but with only two columns it takes too much vertical space for too little content: Not sure how to change it, a horizontal setup (like I have currently) does not look very appealing either in my opinion. -- Porter21 (talk) 17:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd go with 2 or 3 columns, at least for now. Maybe remove some items, e.g. the list of games isn't really needed if we have the portal icons. Ausir(talk) 19:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I like the look, it's an improvement and makes navigation easy. For completion's sake, I suggest including VanBuren and FoPoS too, if only to have New Vegas right next to Fo3. http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/thumb/5/5c/Scribe.jpg/15px-Scribe.jpg Tagaziel (call!) 22:52, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think it'd be better if the image links all led to portals. The underlying idea is to have a navigation that's sort of "branching out" from the main page; you can get quickly from the main page to the portals which in turn link you to all relevant content for that game. Neither VB nor FOBOS have portals (and they probably have barely enough content to warrant one, especially FOBOS) and I don't feel that linking to the game main pages helps with quickly finding content for that game. Sure, it's all linked there somewhere but it's not easy/quick to find. So I'd say we should either create portals for VB/FOBOS or make an "Other games" portal from which they could all be linked (maybe merging Project V13 into it as well for now).

Another point is that the image link section cannot be wider than about 430px because otherwise the whole design doesn't work at 1024*768 (which is the minimum resolution we should be aiming at). This means that if we have 4 links in a row, I'll have to shrink them to fit. I've altered User:Porter21/mainpage to have 4 links so you can take a look at how it'd turn out.

Regarding TOC columns, I've made some alterations so the three-column-setup looks less crowded. I've also moved my CSS adjustments to Common.css so we're on the same page regarding looks - pending cache update, you'll have to refresh your browser cache (Ctrl-Shift-R for IE and Firefox) to see them. -- Porter21 (talk) 08:39, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Van Buren has enough content to warrant a portal, given that almost all of the design documents were released. And even FOBOS has more content than New Vegas or V13 have for now. I think the current version looks fine. Ausir(talk) 08:43, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Very nice! I really like the new layout, especially the image link buttons. They make main pages so much more visually appealing and inviting to users. I also think the news looks better on the right column and the contents on the left column, compared to their locations on the current main page. Well done, Porter! JoePlay (talk) 17:05, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks :) -- Porter21 (talk) 17:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Portal layout
I think I've managed to fix up the blog displays for Monobook, so the new main page should now work fine with both skins. In my opinion, we should also adapt the portals to the same layout as the revised main page, basically like this: This includes moving the helping out stuff from intro to "Helping out", basically only have the game info in there. The downside is that we couldn't have an image in the Fallout world section but I think that's bearable. The News sections for the older games will mostly display Vault general news but that can't be helped really. -- Porter21 (talk) 15:13, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the news section is useful for recent or upcoming games, but pretty useless for older ones, like FO1, FO2 or FOT. So for them I'd keep Contents in its current place, while for FO3 and FONV I'd move news up like on the main page. It might not be that consistent, but I think it would make more sense for older games. Ausir(talk) 15:18, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, we can always make the news sections shorter for the older games (not display as many items). It's easier to navigate and find what you're looking for if the same elements are in the same place on all portal pages, especially from the perspective of someone who's new to the site or a more casual user. -- Porter21 (talk) 15:23, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but with the contents section at the top, the users will find what they're looking for more easily. It's not as if anyone will go to the Fallout 2 portal for news. Ausir(talk) 15:27, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Which is why I want to shorten the intro sections. If you move the createbox etc out, the contents go up and if they're in the left column, we can use a multi-column setup like on the main page - which in turn means that probably more of the contents will be visible without scrolling than with the single-column setup when they're on the right. -- Porter21 (talk) 15:50, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess we could give it a try. Any reason not to have the new main page go live already? Ausir(talk) 22:40, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Had a few tweaks left to do, copied it over now. -- Porter21 (talk) 00:01, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

All portals adapted to new design, also brushed up all the TOCs while I was at it. On a sidenote, we sure have a lot of portals now :P -- Porter21 (talk) 10:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

From the IRC channel
Some IRC comments:


 * [02:05]  ausir: it gives me a horizontal scrollbar
 * [02:05] ausir, it looks like it has a lot more blank areas
 * [02:05] the whole Welcome to The Vault
 * [02:05] A gaming wiki with over 6,478 articles
 * [02:05] We are creating the gamers' guide to the Fallout series, and you can help!
 * [02:06] font size seems wrong and seems offcenter with the ad

Ausir(talk) 00:12, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, I generally need to know what browser and what resolution they're using so I can take a look myself. A horizontal scrollbar is to be expected if the browser window is less than 1024px wide, that's nothing new though as it was the same with the old main page (it's due to the horizontal ad at the top). If the browser window is wider than that, it shouldn't appear, of course - but as I said, I need to know browser and resolution then.


 * The whole header (which capitano was referring to) wasn't changed at all; "a lot of blank areas" is kind of vague, could he/she provide a screenshot maybe? -- Porter21 (talk) 00:26, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The only 'blank areas' I can see are where the Ads go. Lord Spoonfield III 01:02, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, same for me with recent versions of Firefox, IE and Opera. If something's screwed up I need to which browser this is with so I can fix it. -- Porter21 (talk) 10:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)