Front Page (Main Page) Revamp

Forums: Index > Planning Forum > Front Page (Main Page) Revamp

A desire to revamp the front page (the main page of the wiki) was identified. We'd like to hear people's ideas and desires for this area. Especially useful would be links to examples from other wikis, if people have them.-- Kodia 22:13, January 4, 2010 (UTC)

The materials required to tradeskill for a specific recepie would be a help. The special drops and harvests need to be sortable or a way to find them without knowing the exact name of them. bruf 63.77.247.10 15:33, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

What you're speaking of is a pretty massive undertaking, and also mostly unrelated to the main page of the wiki. There are thousands of recipes (maybe tens of thousands). There are ways of having that information, since the vast majority of recipes follow a given pattern, but since this topic is not directly related to a revamp of the main page I would suggest creating a new forum topic for it, if you'd like to continue the discussion on this. -- lordebon 18:05, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

A few thoughts for (at the least) some layout tweaks...

The Site Notice (the blurb at the top of the main page currently reading "Frostfell ends soon..."
- This should probably be displayed a little more prominently, just so it's not lost up there on the top of the page.. Either with larger text, or something to draw a little more attention to it. Also, it's probably time to change the message, lol.
Wikia has a great left-side column set up, starting with the EQ2i logo, the search box, the drop-down menu links (Beginner's Guides, Current Events, Community, etc), and the rest listed there. I personally feel the right-side column should either be filled out or at least lined up a little better as a reflection. As in: the Hot Zone / Daily Mission box, and the Quick Links box line up perfectly, but the randomly chosen image doesn't always. Maybe the randomly chosen image could be put in a table cell to line up with the dimensions of the rest of that column? That way, if it's an icon, it sits in the middle of a thinly outlined box, or if it's a screenshot of a NPC the image will scale down to the size (width) of the table cell. (Does that description make sense?)
I like the News section right underneath the "Welcome to EQ2i" banner. But I feel like the spacing between it, the Did You Know... section, and then the "Popular Areas" bar is off. To my eyes, that would just be a matter of sticking a
tag inbetween the final horizontal rule of "Did you know..." and the Popular Areas banner.
For the Popular Areas subsections, I think the four sections are good links to have, but I would suggest renaming "Quest Timelines" to "Adventuring Timelines"... Mostly because seeing "Quest Timelines" right next to "Quest Categories" reminds me of old schoolteachers who really stressed against redundancy and not using the same phrasing over and over.
Generally speaking, I also have wondered why the EQ2i logo are and the very top bar of the page (upon which our Username and various User-related links lay) are grey but the rest of the site holds a white background... I'm not sure if we want more Everquest / EQ2i related imagery on the front page, but I would think that we either want more of a color palette represented on the main page or else to have all the backgrounds be white.

So, that's my two cents for the time being! -- Mysterious drake 11:02, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

about the background .. you can change that a little. if you go to MORE in the upper right corner, pick Preferences then go the Skin tab

the Gaming one has a dark blue background for example.

--

( Talk ) 12:33, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I know I can change MediaWiki's layout, but I was, generally speaking, referring to the default site layout. And I'm presuming this should be taken into consideration for unregistered users looking for info (and even registered users who use / like the default skin and layout). But I'm no graphic designer, that's just what my brain says makes sense. /grin

-- Mysterious drake 00:01, January 16, 2010 (UTC)

I believe Wikia controls the appearance of the default skin, at least in certain ways. However, I don't really see anything as gray. It may be a slightly off white, just enough to contrast perhaps. -- lordebon 00:15, January 16, 2010 (UTC)

What I would like for the new year is a page that doesn't send my pop up blocker off like a geiger counter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Samsan ( talk • contribs )

So would we, but we have no control over the ads. Please read the link displayed on the front page under the ads regarding this for our response.-- Kodia 14:28, January 17, 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to echo the response that the Flash ads have pretty much taken over my bandwidth when trying to play the game and have wikia open in the background. This has become an ad-spam site and if I can find ANY way to circumvent the flash ads and still have the information available, I will do so. I promise you - I'll never click on one of them anyway! Eldooberino 19:19, January 22, 2010 (UTC)

I'll repeat what I wrote above: we have no control over the ads. Please read the link displayed on the front page under the ads regarding this for our response.-- Kodia 14:28, January 17, 2010 (UTC)

I agree -- personally, I dislike that bottom flash ad. All the more so because it was something forced on us later (originally it was just the banner and box on the main page and for anon users). But like Kodia says, there's nothing we can do directly. The best you can do is email wikia's community folks and tell them how much you don't like that kind of ad. But in the end ad's are going to be there. The bills have to get paid some way, and unlike the original incarnation of EQ2i, wikia is a for-profit company. -- lordebon 22:37, January 22, 2010 (UTC)

Keep controls and navigation in at least roughly the same locations. It's much easier for people to continue using a site they've grown used to when there's not a huge learning curve for the tools and navigation. -- Sigrdrifa 20:37, January 18, 2010 (UTC)

What Sigrdrifa says is really important. There's nothing worse than quickly tabbing into the wiki to check something during a fight, only to find everything's moved! Having more put on the right-hand side of the page wouldn't be good, as it's too easy to end up with the actual content being a skinny column down the middle of the page. Daysy 15:43, February 2, 2010 (UTC)

I agree, and I don't see the left side (the navigation bar area) changing. For the most part I think we're talking about the center column and the smaller right column. -- lordebon 17:49, February 2, 2010 (UTC)

Design Desires Edit

I think another thing we could add to the design of the front page is the Chronomancer zones or areas of the day/-- Kodia 13:26, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

So long as they cycle like everything else there should be no problem in adding that rotation into the same script that does the DD/HZ. -- lordebon 01:55, February 2, 2010 (UTC)

i have made an overview of almost all rotations a while ago in my Sandbox except weekly ts missions. there are quite a few, including all of the 1-shard missions -- Vraeth 09:35, February 2, 2010 (UTC)

How about offering a couple of different stylesheets so users can change the color scheme - I prefer darker pages as I usually play at night and really like this option on wikis that have this. Mcook38 20:32, February 23, 2010 (UTC)

Most people who use Wiki, I believe, know what game they want to research or discuss; they also know whether or not they are interested in a specific quest, item, or issue. I would ask registrants on the main page to identify, and prioritize their interests, then when they log in, they would see a menu that would be ordered by their personally defined interests. This would be the primary interactive design element. The secondary design element would contain other common options or interests, and the third design element would be an interesting factoid, or series of options that one might consider. This would be a Wiki creative input area. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piva ( talk • contribs )

That's not really something that could be done for the main page. There is the "My Home" that wikia added that does something along those lines, but the overall main page has to be the same for everyone. -- lordebon 23:33, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

I play late at night sometimes, and switching to the Wikia page from EQ2 can be very hard on the eyes, EQ2i is VERY bright. Any chance of having a per-user setting for the background/text colors? -- Solzak

You can change skin in the upper right corner more -> preferences --

( Talk ) 22:34, September 14, 2010 (UTC)

Current Events Mockup Edit

I've put together a mockup for current events at User:Lordebon/MPR . It's a work in progress (in particular, I want to slim down / consolidate the right-hand mission box and add the chronomage task). I left the rest of the page as it currently is, in the absence of a pressing need to change it and reasonable suggestions. The bullet-and-text appearance is just temporary, I plan on trying something along the lines of the live event templates (a little box with icon). -- lordebon 23:03, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Updated to add an example "current event" in the form of Moonlight Enchantments (which I've added as a default just to have it show for now). Thoughts on the presentation (i.e. the little box that matches the event template)? -- lordebon 17:00, June 13, 2010 (UTC)

Bueller? Bueller? -- lordebon 11:23, June 22, 2010 (UTC)

I like the concept of the "Current Events," but I'm left wondering if that make the page look a little repetitive with the "Popular Areas -> Events" section... Unless the current events could be made to include the Live and World events as well? Or maybe if it were worked into the "Popular" section somehow?

Actually, I kind of like the idea that's now given me (one that might get a little out-there though, I warn you). What if the "Popular Areas -> Events" section was altered to be a "Latest Update" notes section only? And the "Current Events" (double-column-spanning yellow bar and all) was placed directly underneath the "Popular Areas" header? Would it then be possible to create a code for on-going World Events (that, unlike Moonlight Enchantments and other Live Events, don't have a specific only-active-for-suchandsuch-weekend timeframe), so that the Current Events header could be made to display something like:

Current Events - {date}

"Rebuilding the Druid Rings Event" - on-going World Event (or some similar text note to that effect)

"Moonlight Enchantments, active through the 20th and 21st" (as it already is)

Coming Soon! "Next Live Event listed here..." (or something to this effect, just as a thought)

Like I said, I realize that this might be a stretch, but now that I've finally taken the time to look at your revamp page good and hard, this is where my head is. -- Mysterious drake 21:16, June 22, 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to keep the GU under "Events" (maybe change that subsection to something like "Latest Update"), but good point about moving the world / live events up. And yes, it'll be possible to move world events up to the "Current Events" sections. For the world events I'd like to make them into a template to keep the page neat, and I could then make a relatively generic one for world events where we could update it as necessary. -- lordebon 21:24, June 22, 2010 (UTC)

Miscellaneous / Misplaced Comments Edit

Where can i find updated tradeskill rush order writs so that I can plan ahead? thank you, Jakenn 11:29, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't really pertain to the topic, but all TS writs that we have wikified should be in Category:Tradeskill Writs or a child category. Most TS writs aren't wikified to my knowledge however, they're very formulaic and so don't benefit greatly from having a specific page. -- lordebon 14:48, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

New Main Page... Edit

A discussion thread for the new Main Page has been started at Sassinak introduces a new Main Page layout...
Just an FYI for those who had joined the discussion HERE and would like to take part in the discussion of the new layout there . -- Mysterious drake 08:05, August 7, 2010 (UTC)

How would you like to see EQ2i update our look? Edit

As we now have the frontpage revamp for quite some time already, maybe someone would like to disable the question and link on every page "How would you like to see EQ2i update our look?" :-)? -- Alinor 09:49, February 16, 2011 (UTC)