Sassinak introduces a new Main Page layout...

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Okay, so for starters, I'm wondering what more tweaking is or can be done to the revamp, especially given all the discussion on the Front Page Revamp forum page...
Also, I'm noticing a few issues with the layout principally introduced:

The "Other gaming wikis from Wikia" links are FAR off the right side of the page and need to be relocated (at least in Firefox)
I still personally maintain that the "Randomly Chosen Image" needs to be coded to automatically match the width of its column... Meaning, if the image is larger than the size of the column, it should scale down. Conversely, if the image is smaller than the column, it should be centered within the width of the column. Both options should contain a max-width border as an outline, in my opinion.
I would also like to see the total height of the page reduced slightly... To perhaps 1024pixels maximum, so that the bulk main page center column is all viewable upon loading (from the top "Welcome to EQ2i!" to the bottom "Statistics:" section). I offer this given that most players are at least a X by 1024 pixel resolution, thus a maximum height for the center column under that measurement will leave room for the taskbar and browser status bar at the bottom of the screen, yet still leave all the primary information and links of the main page viewable without the need to scroll down.
I also think we still need a section to show current in-game information (as in the live events: moonlight enchantments, city festivals, etc). Lordebon, I believe, had been developing a method to do this, which may bear fruit for use on the main page -- but until then, since the admins (this is not a judgement, merely a reflection) don't often update the News, I think we need to put back in the "Popular Areas" subsection with all of its data at least to some effect - until it can be upgraded or replaced accordingly. (Well, at least the "Events" subsection of the former "Popular Areas" heading.)
I'm not sure if the Wikia gaming logo is artistically meant to be cut off from the table stating the Mark Missions and Shard Zones; but it (and the "Other gaming wikis from Wikia" links) could (both) well be placed back at the bottom of the main page.
Also, it seems that the randomly chosen image isn't properly displaying -- clicking the outline placeholder of what/where the image will be brings up the full sized image, but the image itself doesn't seem to be showing up on the Main Page. I'm not sure if this is just my computer, or Firefox's doing, or what... But I mention it because it could be due to coding changes.

Other than this, frankly I wish Sassinak would have given more of a heads up of "major Main Page changes incoming soon" rather than just springing them all at once -- I fear a lot of users will have a hard time adjusting to the sudden changes of the main page... for those of them, and we "power" users, who used it for various purposes.
/my two cents... and then some. -- Mysterious drake 08:02, August 7, 2010 (UTC)

Think of it more as a revamp of the popular areas table - which I wrote in the first place, and has essentially never been changed by anyone else. In my opinion, the ongoing discussion should continue as far as what elements belong on the front page, and in what order - but I'd like to think that the contents/popular table will be a primary element in any case. I have no intentions of working on the remaining elements of the page.

Basically, I noticed how other game wiki's on Wikia had presented links to their major topics in a clearer and more space-saving manner than we did, and I felt it was worth working on myself. I don't think I owe an apology, but I don't think I've interfered with the revamp discussion either. Out of all the things that were discussed for revamping the front page, the topics links were not among them. -- Sassinak 09:06, August 7, 2010 (UTC)

Popping in this morning since I had a bit of free time. The new ToC is decent with a few issues but it should have been brought up on the revamp forum topic for consensus. Who made the original TOC is irrelevant, as there is no ownership on a wiki outside of the user namespace. You should not have changed the main page without seeking consensus.

Issues with how you changed it aside, the TOC should not be above the news. The TOC is static links (things that don't change) while in theory the news should be updated with current events in EQ2. Current events can still be added in via the method I talked about on the revamp page, and that should go under the news but above the TOC -- again, information that changes should be presented earlier on the layout.

As for the actual TOC, I'm not sure all of the groupings are good. The UserGuides grouping is odd: Achievements, Lore, Events, and Game Updates are different from user guides. Ditto the classes grouping: races, skills, and gods are not really subtopics of classes. Other nitpicks (I'm a perfectionist) would be that there shouldn't be trailing bullets and that some of the vertical whitespace could be reduced; vertical space on the main page is biggie on websites. -- lordebon 13:52, August 7, 2010 (UTC)

Let me share my thoughts for a moment. From my perspective, there had been discussion about the main page revamp in January, February, and June, and it appeared to have stalled and had focussed on minutiae rather than major issues. I had wanted to improve the popular areas section for a long time. I looked at several other gaming wikis and noted that they uniformly had cleaner front pages and presented their links in less space and usually grouped into a handful of sections that would be easy to remember. I thought we could do the same with our mess of links.

The groupings are of course up for debate. I spent 20 minutes with pen and paper trying to come up with eight logical groupings of the topics that we had in our Popular and Links sections. There is no perfect way to organize them, but I felt that it should be possible to identify 6-8 major sections and then fit the rest underneath those.

In my opinion, six major sections of the wiki are self-evident: quests, zones, monsters, classes, equipment, and spells. Therefore I made these prominent, and organized the remaining links wherever they seemed related. There is a need for a 7th section to cover current events and such. All of the other wikis also put their beginner guides very prominently on their main pages, and I took that for sage advice. The 8th section is debateable - we are not really much of a tradeskill resource, but I was grasping for an 8th topic. Perhaps the 8th section should change to Events, or some other useful major topic, and the tradeskill links folded in underneath the classes section.

Anyway, I hope that I have helped advance the revamp somewhat, and maybe we can proceed with the remaining elements on the page. It is 8 months since the discusssion on revamp began, after all. --- Sassinak 03:21, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

For me it's ok. Link to plain (automatically generated) category pages are debatable, like Category:Factions or Category:Resources , imho these do not provide enough information to justify such a prominent link. I would scrap the random image as it does not provide any useful information and just consumes bandwith and loading time. Same applies to the welcome frame, the main page could also be named "Welcome to EQ2i" to have a nice header and the "award winning" stuff could be located elsewhere on the main page (maybe instead of the "ugly" picture in the upper left corner ;-) I miss the current events on the start page, what's going on right now in the game, like running live events. Oh, and it is not true that we are not a ts resource, I really like checking things here instead of the wading through the info on Niamis site (which is undebatable a highly valueable source of information nevertheless :-) -- Alinor 09:40, August 9, 2010 (UTC)

The revamped main page looks best if you use the Sapphire or Jade Skin, the other skin's cause problems with the look of the mainpage. --

( Talk ) 11:34, August 9, 2010 (UTC)

Well, not for me. Plus, despite being logged in, with those skins I get stupid WoW ads and movies on the main page, which I don't see with monobook-- Alinor 12:43, August 9, 2010 (UTC)

This is actually a little embarrassing because I thought EQ2i enforced the use of Monobook for every visitor. If that is not the case then perhaps we need another look. I adjusted the new table of contents so it will look ok on Monobook at 1024 width (i.e. netbook screen size).

I already edited our CSS so that the main page does not show its page title at the top - this cleans up the main page (like other game wikis) and saves us some vertical space. My goal was to get all of the Table of Contents to be viewable on 600 pixels high (i.e. again, netbook size, on the assumption that browser windows will seldom be smaller than this). I almost succeeded but not quite.

I think links to category pages are generally the most convenient, but the category pages themselves could use some work so they are more self-explanatory. The quality of our category pages varies widely, although it has come a long way in the last year.

Anyone can feel free to move around the links in the Table of Contents "bubbles". Here's my first proposal: how about we fold the Tradeskills links into the other class-related "bubbles", and then give the 8th bubble to some other major topic, such as Game Updates and Events?

Oh, and P.S., I strongly support removing the Random Image from the front page. I could maybe see a "Featured Article" section or something, but Random Image is so 2005, and just wastes space. :-) -- Sassinak 17:12, August 9, 2010 (UTC)

But, but .. we fixed or added the random image somewhere in the last 2 years again. --

( Talk ) 17:31, August 9, 2010 (UTC)

Ok... it's so... 2008?? :-) -- Sassinak 18:09, August 9, 2010 (UTC)

The official skin from wikia is Monaco (Sapphire the default subtheme). That's what users not logged in see and that's what everything should be designed for. Wikia moved away from Monobook as the default literally years ago. -- lordebon 00:43, August 10, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant Monaco when I wrote Monobook. I see the problem now, the main body of the page is narrower on those subthemes that have background images, when compared to those subthemes that do not have background images. This should be pretty easy to accommodate with the "bubble" layout. -- Sassinak 01:59, August 10, 2010 (UTC)

Great job on the new homepage layout, I really like it. One thing I'd like to see added, perhaps as a bullet under zones: Dungeon Timeline just called "Dungeons." My friends and I use this page all the time to figure out where to go when we put together an ad-hoc group. -- Camelotcrusade 17:49, August 10, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for adding it, I love it! -- Camelotcrusade 11:55, August 11, 2010 (UTC)

Followup thoughts on the new main page...

"Basically, I noticed how other game wiki's on Wikia had presented links to their major topics in a clearer and more space-saving manner than we did, and I felt it was worth working on myself. I don't think I owe an apology, but I don't think I've interfered with the revamp discussion either. Out of all the things that were discussed for revamping the front page, the topics links were not among them." Quote: Sassinak

I particularly am bugged by the sense I get that you felt a need to make EQ2i look lke the "other game wiki's on Wikia" rather than let our site be itself. Just because other sites you use/visit use that layout does not instantaneously and inherently mean it is the best and/or most useful layout for a front page...

Also, in my opinion, you've less "interfered with the revamp discussion" so much as "taken it over and into your own hands completely" by creating the layout you put in and not by posting it to a personal namespace for review first. THAT way, not only could it have been reviewed and tweaked before being introduced, but the community could have weighed in on the merits and failings of the would-have-been proposed new layout.

This was the only thing that really rubbed me the wrong way -- I'm with lordebon in that I would have liked to see a heads-up first.

Such as it is, there are still some layout problems I have in "MonoBook" skin and some other changes I think have been overlooked from inclusion in what Sassinak put in place on the Main Page... I still believe the News should be the first thing under the header at the top of the page, and that the admins need to be adding more things TO the news feed (see my comments on Sassinak's talk page ). And ESPECIALLY with LU57 imminent on the horizon, the Popular Areas (or else some community-edit-able section) needs to be reintroduced ASAP so that the main page can display related info. (The LU57 page, the end of the Druid Rings event, etc etc etc)
So, as soon as I get some free time this weekend, I'm gonna see about a workup for Main Page 2.1 (or however you want to think about it). -- Mysterious drake 21:11, August 13, 2010 (UTC)

To me, the wiki's first function isn't and has never been as a news source, its first role is as a reference.

It was not my choice that the news was moved above the reference links in June 2008; Uberfuzzy just did that one day without discussing it with anyone else. My personal opinion is that the front page should give access to the most frequently referenced items in as few clicks and as little scrolling as possible, as it did before Uberfuzzy's edit.

At least 90% of what was formerly posted as legitimate news is now contained within the "current events" menu at left and the "today's events" box at right. We have successfully automated this stuff and it no longer needs to take space in the main body.

Perhaps the role of newswriter needs to be separated from the role of admin, but in the past 7 weeks there was only one news post, and it wasn't actually news, it was something that belonged in the forum instead. In fact, more than half of the posts in the past year in Project:News are actually just items of interest that are better suited for either 1) the forum or 2) a hypothetical new "Featured Article" section. (The latter would certainly be more useful than the "Random Image".)

But I am just one person and don't claim to speak for everyone. I just thought it was a presumptious change that put the news on top in the first place, and I have a hard time believing that it is the first priority of most visitors. -- Sassinak 22:34, August 13, 2010 (UTC)

Point made, and my apologies for coming off so hot-headed earlier...

But whether it's called "news" or something else, I still believe there's a use for a section on the front page to contain items which could be viewed as being of some significance (in whatever way for whatever the user/peruser of the wiki). Whether it's site news, game rumors, server downtime reminders, and so on. Maybe that's just me and the type of user I am, but I usually check through eq2players.com, ZAM, eq2interface and occasionally (when I'm feeling particularly masochistic) eq2flames.com for interesting game tidbits. I sometimes see things on these other sites which spread the word, and find myself thinking "why can't EQ2i be a part of that word-spreading?"

So yeah, call it "news" or "rumor central" or whatever you like, but I guess my point at its bottom line is that we should take advantage of the fact that we can make use of some space on the front page to share interesting tidbits with our community. -- Mysterious drake 06:45, August 14, 2010 (UTC)