Forum:Main Page Redesign

Right, this forum is Drake's idea and not mine, he just didn't want to create a forum on his own. So now he can post here about his ideas for redesigning the main page. Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 12:31, May 9, 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Kaido! Anyways, like Kaido said I have a couple of proposals in mind for redesigning the main page of the wiki. The main page is usually what new users and visitors see when they come to the wiki and having an attractive main page can help draw new users in. My first proposal is to give the scrolling navigation gallery bar (the one with episode guide, the manga, animal species, and merchandise tabs) an upgrade. The new navigation bar would look something like the one from this wiki http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Age_Wiki (the one with one big square and 4 smaller rectangles). Not only would this give the front page a nicer design, but it would allow us to add more information as well. It's also very easy to navigate with a touchscreen, perfect for our mobile users. In addition, we would need to update the some of the pics. Surely, there are better pics from Dressrosa than just the colosseum itself...My other proposal would be adding a place for latest blogs on the front page. You would be surprised how many people have trouble finding blogs sometimes. This would make it easier for visitors to find our latest blogs without them having to go looking for it. So yeah, feel free to leave suggestions and any constructive feedback Roranoa Drake II (talk) 13:48, May 9, 2016 (UTC)

Discussion
The blogs thing sounds good, but I can see the debate about making the main page touch screen friendly lasting for months...

14:54, May 9, 2016 (UTC)

Making image slider thing touchscreen friendly is only one of the benefits to adding it. Technically the current one is touchscreen friendly too, but there's only 4 things you could touch... Roranoa Drake II (talk) 15:37, May 9, 2016 (UTC)

I'm fine with adding recent blogs to the main page. I guess a column (similar to what we have on the wiki activity) on the bottom right of the page would be a good location for the blogs?

As for the new pictures.... I wholeheartedly support the idea of getting new pictures. Dressrosa's arc is ending soon in the anime, so maybe we can have a picture of them celebrating Doflamingo's defeat when that episode come out? And we can update the manga picture as well to reflect either the ending of Zou Arc (something to do with the new alliance, maybe?), or the beginning of the new arc (though I'm not quite sure what picture to use yet).

I'm up for updating the front page's slider, but not in the same way as Dragon Age's slider. I feel like it just don't work well with the rest of the page. While making our wiki touch-screen friendly is important, we also have to keep the aesthetic design in mind. But I'd be up for something between our current slider and Dragon Age's slider. 20:57, May 11, 2016 (UTC)

I've never been a fan of the wiki's main page, mainly because I don't like the color yellow but it is indeed in need of a redesign. Instead of the Dragon Age slider, I suggest the one from avatar.wikia.com. Besides the slider, I suggest that the rest of the main page gets reworked too, as well as the mobile main page. MavikVCT (talk) 21:52, May 11, 2016 (UTC)

More then fancy stuff, the main page just need a redesign of the template style. That alone would give a "refresh" look to it without even touching the layout or the template themselves, just the style. After all the main page doesn't seem to lack content. We could start from there and then see if we want to do anything else. Also a bit of suggestion: Wikia has his own mobile app for one piece, I created a badge for my wiki but I think it should also be relevant here. I can make it for here too if you guys like it.


 * I'm all up for updating the templates. The templates are sorely outdated, and unfortunately, it's not just the templates on the main page that have the problem. I'd try to redesign the templates myself, but I just don't know enough coding to do that and we don't have a lot of users that are experts with coding on here =( 01:49, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

@Mavik, I don't really like the Avatar slider at all. It's not very touch-screen friendly, which is not what are we looking for. Furthermore, it's more of a hassle to navigate than our current slider, and we should make our slider as simple as possible for viewers to navigate, while keeping the same amount of content. And this is just my personal opinion, but it feels like it's even more outdated than our current one. So yeah, I don't really like the Avatar slider... 01:49, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

I agree with most people that there should be a slider, I also support the idea of revamping the main page, update "Do You Know?", add page portal, revamp the news section and many others.

So when should we start?

Joekido (talk) 04:23, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

I can try to revamp things but I don't know where to test it tbh...

Adding a recent blogs section would be nice. A lot of people new to wikis might not know how to find blogs the usual way, so having them on the main page like on the [Bleach wiki http://bleach.wikia.com/wiki/Bleach_Wiki] might help. 20:53, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

Anything to make this wiki not look like it's trapped in 2007 would be a vast improvement. I lean towards the dragon age style, but but the avatar one isn't bad. I just really want to see true improvement either way!

I think this forum needs to be divided into sections to discuss separate topics. 22:29, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

We can make the main page similar to this: http://lost.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Joekido (talk) 22:53, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

Adding the recent blogs section would be a nice quality of life update as I had trouble finding blogs here the first time I visited this place. Also the dragon age slider would be a great thing to throw in as well. It looks very fancy and works great on my Nexus 10 HiddenAssassinxxXX (talk) 02:13, May 13, 2016 (UTC)

I just want to point out that all the fancy sliders you see on other wikis are generally used because they have portals or are gaming wikis (therefore list different game versions). I think the native wikia slider is more then enough for us tbh.

I like the Dragon Age slider, and I do feel we could have a little update of our slider purely for the fact that we have something new on our main page. 16:54, May 13, 2016 (UTC)

Sections
I think there's definitely sections we don't need on our mainpage too. The sidebar is especially cluttered when compared to the rest of the page. There's also sections that could be more helpful to us that we don't have. And tweaks to sections we already have that could be done.

My thoughts are the following sections should be removed:


 * Spoiler warning
 * It's 2016, people. Does a wiki really still need a spoiler warning? Very few that I've seen have them still.


 * Guidelines and Rules Warnings
 * It's great to warn people of our policies, but I don't think their current spot on the main page helps us when placed above content. A single link to our Guidebook might be nice, but placed lower on the page. We live in an age with content mods, we don't need to place so much weight on the image guidelines anymore.


 * Did you know?
 * This section seems kind of outdated, useless, and immature. Do we really need it?


 * Affiliates
 * This might need to be a separate discussion, but I don't think affiliate wikis really help us all that much, and putting them on the main page isn't that helpful. Rather than get rid of affiliations, what if we made a page for affiliations that had small blurbs about the other wikis and put them in the Guidebook or something?

From the sidebar:
 * Content
 * I don't get what this box is for. Just a box with links to broad content? How does that really help us?


 * Mythbusters
 * This box with a link to the Mythbusters page isn't helpful. More on that later.

Here's my thoughts on things that need to be tweaked/added:


 * Blogs Section
 * This was mentioned already, it's a great idea. Should be featured prominently in any new page design


 * Current events
 * We should have the infobox images from the chapters/episodes when available. Might also be nice to add one for the newest movie/special, as well as game.


 * Random Mythbusters template
 * One of our most unique and useful articles, it might be nice to automate a template that can take random sections from our mythbusters page to highlight that page.


 * Animanga Box and Shonen Jump Box
 * Animanga just needs to leave the sidebar. Both need to have have a variable size/width.


 * Social Media
 * We should have a twitter box or something. Something that visually highlights our social media, not just a series of links, as it is now.

Anyone else have ideas/responses? 22:29, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

Get rid of the Reminder and Warnings, Note to Editors, Content and side Animanga boxes. The length of Mythbusters is a slight issue. Do we needed really the One Piece Sites section? Finally affiliates should stay. 22:52, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

I think the spoiler warning is still useful, as we can point to it when someone complains about this and such being a spoiler Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 22:55, May 12, 2016 (UTC)

Spoiler warnings are never needed. I see nothing wrong with Did You Know. It just needs to be updated. I don't see how it can be considered "immature". SeaTerror (talk) 00:06, May 13, 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Kaido about the spoiler section. The Did You Know section is pretty out of date, though. Some of the stuff there is interesting, but most of it is stuff that people would get from reading the manga. It would be better to include more behind the scenes stuff like the bit about how Zoro was originally meant to be on Buggy's crew. 02:30, May 13, 2016 (UTC)

Keep but update the "did you know" template. However I would move it to the sidebar and make it so that it displays only a random fact each time.

So here are my thoughts as of right now:

Spoiler Warning- It's a no-brainer that when you come to a wiki that you are bound to be spoiled one way or another. However, we should keep it because better safe than sorry. There's always going to be some people who will complain and then go to other fan sites saying, "OMG THE WIKI SPOILED ME AND THEY DIDNT WARN ME"

Did You Know- Perhaps we could update it with more "mature content". An example would be "Did you know that Pizarro of the Blackbeard Pirates was based off the real life conquistador?" And like Vid said before some behind-the-scenes stuff as well would be a nice touch.

Affiliates- This just takes up space. It doesn't really add anything so just relocate it.

Social Media- Get rid of the Tumblr stuff. I'm pretty sure Jade was in charge of that and we ended up abandoning it. It's welcome to stay if anyone is willing to volunteer to maintain it.

Blogs- Definitely should be on front page.

Site News- Something that would notify visitors when a new chapter or episode is released would be good.

Choosing images for the slider is a separate discussion I guess. That's all I have to say for now.

Roranoa Drake II (talk) 16:09, May 13, 2016 (UTC)

Just get rid of the spoiler warning, it should be logical for everyone.

Update the Did you know section, it doesn't need to go. I like Vid's and Drake's ideas.

Having one link to the guidelines is good enough. Don't mind having it gone either.

Affiliates should stay. Animanga box, ehhhh, don't really care about this one.

Get rid of the content section. I support the mythbusters changed as proposed by JSD

Big yes to chapter infobox pics and blogs. Social media, ehhh, ours is not that active, is it..? 17:03, May 13, 2016 (UTC)

I'm not too sure about the chapter images... that's because we usually have them way too late to add them when we update the current events. If you want to add something, I'm using a random image template for my wiki, I could import it here if you like it.

I remade from scratch the main page and this is my first draft (I had to separate left and right column due to the Wikia sidebar). I tried to mimic the style of https://one-piece.com/. The theme (red&grey) is very different from our standard one (yellow&sand), if you don't want to change it that much I can try edit the images to fit our theme. Some stuff I can still add:
 * A random image template.
 * A Gallery with the straw hats.
 * A twitter widget. In order to add this, I have to access the twitter account or who can access it has to follow the instructions on this page.


 * I can confirm it can be easily made with our classic yellow&sand theme.

That looks like an amazing first draft! However, I was kinda hoping we could use the dragon age slider instead since a few people in the forum are in favor of using it. Perhaps we could test that out and see how it would look Roranoa Drake II (talk) 22:21, May 14, 2016 (UTC)

I kinda like to go ahead and update it now... the current template are a mess and a nightmare of copy&pasted old deprecated codes, so they need to be fixed anyway. If everybody finds my version acceptable, I would like to start updating the templates, also because it would be easier to judge the overall theme from the main page instead of a test page. From there, we can discuss what to change or to add/remove:
 * We can surely add the dragon age slider, however I would expect it to be quite complicated so I need time to understand how it works. Beside that, if you didn't notice it their slider have sub-menus, so you also need to start thinking how we will make the menu structure. Imo, it is overly complicated for our needs (we also need to use other images) and the current slider already does a nice job, however there is no harm in trying.
 * Atm "my version" uses red, but as I said we can try a yellow version and then decide which one we prefer.
 * We can discuss if there are other feature we want to add.

I've uploaded the screeshot of both "version". I like the red theme more, but the yellow theme is good too and is consistent with our current overall theme.

I love the color red and despise the color yellow, so I definitely support the former. The rest of the redesign is awesome as well. Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 21:42, May 15, 2016 (UTC)

I'm kind of partial to both options, really. Though I do kinda like browns and yellow as it seems to fit the "Straw Hat" theme to me. More red certainly isn't a bad thing. If we do change to red, does someone have photoshop and could change the tint of of current background to red? 21:53, May 15, 2016 (UTC)

Do you mean File:Wiki-background? I can try... but it's not only that. Anyway, as I said before I'd really like to start updating the templates, so can I at least start with the yellow theme since it's not a big change while we discuss if we should use the red one? By seeing it "live" we can also evaluate better what things can be changed or added.

I did mean that image. And I'd day yeah, go for updating templates now. But stick to yellow, that may be a point of contention. 22:13, May 15, 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion the red looks much better than the yellow. The red makes everything really pop out and eye catching. Also, like Leviathan89 suggested earlier, perhaps adding an image gallery of the Straw Hat Pirates underneath the slider would be a good idea as well HiddenAssassinxxXX (talk) 01:25, May 16, 2016 (UTC)

I played around with some possible red tints for the background: pale, bright, and dark. Not sure which one would work best if at all, but at least we have some options.

On a related yet shifting note, what if we changed our background? I can live with our current one, but it is kind of dull, so perhaps if anyone has ideas for that we could try it out? Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 01:35, May 16, 2016 (UTC)

Initial revamp completed. Now:
 * Decide if red or yellow (or whatever)
 * Update the theme accordingly (Special:ThemeDesigner,  and probably check other "wiki pages").
 * Discuss what to add/change in the main page. (Main character gallery? Dragon age slider?)
 * Expand Did You Know

The white on bright yellow is straining for me to read, I think red will be better.

Also, the main column isn't as long as the side column, so that presents the opportunity to possibly add other stuff to it. Why not add the Quote Section that people seemed to like but went nowhere? Kaido King of the Beasts (talk) 11:35, May 16, 2016 (UTC)

True, I tried to add a shadow to make it more readable, but in that case I'll just make the text black (try to hard-refresh the page now). About the right column, I also wanted to add the twitter widget, but either I access the twitter account or whoever he can should follow this guide.

Few things. I agree with Kaido about yellow being an eye-sore. Personally I'd go with the red. Nothing says new like a fresh coat of paint. Also, I'm still in favor of using the dragon age slider. It's unique and would make our wiki really stand out among the others. Is it possible if we could test it out and see how it would look before whether or not we decide to implement it? As for the Strawhat Image Gallery, maybe we could add a few of the antagonists there too. I guess below the slider would be the best place for it if we decide to add that in Roranoa Drake II (talk) 16:09, May 16, 2016 (UTC)

Of course it's possible to test it out, however it's not that easy... that slider use a combination of templates, CSS and possibly JavaScripts it's not just a matter of copy and paste. If you didn't notice it also has a menu with a tree-like structure, so for now you can think about how you will make it here (what to put inside), just to start things.