Talk:Home/Archive06

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New Home Page Look Proposal

With the introduction of Challenges in Update 12 I have thought for a while now that the home page for the wiki could do with a complete overhaul, take a look at [1] They have just about everything covered on their main page which I feel is what the ddo wiki should be like. Their page is nicely broken up into sections making it clearer to their visitors on how to find the information they are looking for.

The DDO Wiki's content has advanced a hell of a lot over the last 2 years with many excellent contributions and some very nice features added to it, so I think it is time we overhaul the main page to be more efficient and better looking. What are other peoples thoughts on this matter? UltraMonk 21:36, October 19, 2011 (EDT)

im all for improving the look of it. show me how you want it to be on your sandbox page or something (please be low-resolution user-friendly though!). i liked Borror's idea of using Mediawiki:Sitenotice kinda as a sitemap too so, home = detailed contentsmap, sitenotice = brief contents map is the way to go?. --yoko5000 05:42, October 20, 2011 (EDT)

That certainly is a better home page than what we have now, the Guild Wars wiki uses the same layout. Moving to something like that (maybe with just one top banner and less fluff pictures/icons) would be an improvement but you'll have to keep the Mediawiki:Sitenotice header that Yoko mentioned, without it the home page would look like one of those horrible Wikia sites. by Mjoll 07:26, October 20, 2011 (EDT)

sorry it was such a slow process, but i finally made a draft here. obviously its still missing some icons and templates and needing extra tweak but i need feedback from you guys at this point.

• recent update listings - obviously on this format we need to put efforts on shortening whats new on each update. maybe 6 updates are too many? just 3 will do?
• sitemap section - im sure i forgot so many things to add on the list. add your thoughts, for obvious ones thats missing just edit templates and add em.
• about wiki section - yea, i think its time for us to start up "contributors corner" section like other wikis and start writing up Editing guidelines/Administration guidelines... been too lazy for this too long myself...
• browse portal - i think browse portal is no longer needed, once we have this kind of top page up. its old and not getting updated much.

anyways, if no objection, i will finish this up and replace the site mainpage in a few weeks. yoko5000 04:46, December 19, 2011 (EST)

Much better, I like it. Some personal preference nitpicking:

• The 'Welcome' section seems too big, I get the message you want to send with the 3 pics - Players & Dungeons & Dragons - but they take too much space. Same thing for the 'New visitors find information by...', you could list the various options on the horizontal to save more space.
• The Emergency notice message might look better outside and on top of the Welcome section.
• Yup, listing just the last 3 updates should be more than enough for the 'What's New' section.
• I like the round icons (even if you have to use some of them more than once) but not so much the square pics/icons, they break the flow of the page.
• The 'Create a new page' section should be placed closer to the top of the page to draw in more contributors rather than at the bottom.
• The White Dragon logo seems out of place, a pic that fills the entire empty section might look better. That or leaving that section empty. by Mjoll 07:11, December 19, 2011 (EST)

Impressive. A few things that pops to my mind:

• The 'Welcome' section should be more helpful, or be made smaller. It cares a lot of screen estate, putting everything else on the homepage under the fold for me. Yet, it gives very little information. It's unlikely that most of our users will scroll down and explore the homepage. Thus, the first thing they will see should be what we consider the most important ones. I doubt the Welcome section fulfills that function at the moment.
• The symbol for quests should be the yellow quest icon.
• The big dragon between the gameplay and the crafting boxes look a bit silly, to be honest. A blank space would probably look better, if we can't think of anything else to put in there.
• I concur with Mjoll that the emergency thingy looks out of place, but that might be for the better. You want it to be noticed, so looking out of place my serve that goal better than a neatly placed notice.
• I like the square icons. I'll agree that the round icons feel integrate better in the design, and if we can find fitting replacements then we should go with those instead, but the square icons are hardly a sin. → Borror0 16:38, December 19, 2011 (EST)

My thoughts:

• I agree, three updates is enough.
• I don't mind the square icons. Maybe have square for Wiki stuff, and round for game stuff, or vice versa?
• Is there a way to code things so the Welcome section is at the top for unregistered/newly registered users, but lower down for, say, everybody with the ddowikivip tag, or some other relevant user group? (I seriously know nothing about these coding thingamajiggers...)
  • If so, definitely want to move the Emergency notice out of that spot. I assume it's just a blank space when nothing's there? If so, having it at the top, maybe with a blinking icon - but NOT the whole thing blinking! - to draw the eye would work. Assuming it isn't taking up screen estate when inactive, at least.
• Aww, I didn't get to see the big dragon! I need to check the history... Hrm, that is kinda odd. But so is a blank space, IMHO. But I can't think of anything useful to put there... maybe the Create New Page thing? Granted, that really does belong in the Wiki section, but I agree, drawing in contributors would be a good thing.→ LrdSlvrhnd 01:41, December 20, 2011 (EST)

alright, done enough tweaking, doing final cleanup now and its going live. a few things to respond;

• rounded icons are nice, but its better to have square ones for (at least) the update section. extra photoshop duty required each update is released? doesnt sound too exciting.
• still looking to swap marketplace icon on gameplay section to something else. decent icon of reading/books/bookshelves/library or something like that. cant find one. also considered Media:kobold icon for newbie section, but the harbor icon is good enough me thinks.
• moving "create new article" thingy to the top kinda defeats the purpose of the sectioning on the page. cant figure out how to fit that into welcome section either. personally dont like it to be the top, wouldnt it be giving the impression of wiki being incomplete and needy/hungry/greedy for contributions? uh...
• dont think what silverhand said is possible. also remember this is a high traffic page, to get caching on xevo's side to work, we have to refrain using valuables and such on this page.
• dragon banner on the welcome section. it getting boring to me, and this one reminds me of shade everytime i see it since its same as his forum avatar! only reason its staying is we had to have DDO:Eberron Unlimited logo somewhere.→ yoko5000 23:38, December 21, 2011 (EST)

Updated New Home Page Look Proposal

I am starting to fall more and more in love with the new homepage look.. One thing that has somewhat annoyed me about it however, is the limitation of only being able to see the three most recent Updates' summaries.... I have a proposed solution, that I am ~83% satisfied with and feel now is a good time to propose a possible solution I have devised... My proposal. The only concern I have about the way I made it work is the fact that I seem to have to use static defined page widths. Perhaps after looking at this idea, one of you can find a way to deal with that issue. ShoeMaker 14:56, March 8, 2012 (EST)

Tested multiple resolutions on both my desktop and laptop. Would like some more feed-back on other resolutions perhaps on smaller screens than what I am running, maybe even some 4:3s. My desktop screen is a 27" 16:10 1080p and my laptop is a 17" widescreen.. As I suspected, 800x600 resolution looks horrible with my proposal. However, this horrible look is not restricted to my proposed scrolling section, it also exists on the current Home page. So, I tried 1024x768, and it looked almost identical. With resolutions above 1280x800 the scroll section is smaller than the rest of the page, which honestly doesn't look too bad unless you zoom waaaaay out... ShoeMaker 16:27, March 8, 2012 (EST)

like the idea, but width issue def needs to be resolved. according to my ex-coworker, international trend on website width is only started shifting from 800 to about 950 right now. so yea 1080 isnt the way to go... i am running 15 inch/non-wide screen monitor, so i know the current layout issue on 800 screen taht you mention (middle section gets slightly larger due to images on the middle of sitemap)... that doesnt bother me much though, just have to zoom out one degree... → yoko5000 08:31, March 9, 2012 (EST)

I like the idea of keeping info of the older updates on the homepage. Not a fan of the scroll bar, but this is a wiki, still I like the idea. Have you tried http://quirktools.com/screenfly/ or http://www.yournew.com/resolution_test.cfm to test different resolutions there are also browser plugins and other downloadable utilitys. Bladedge 17:40, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

I've asked for help here. Hopefully I can get a solution out of this deal.. Feel free to pass that link along to anyone you think might be able to come up with part of the solution. Thanx. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 01:41, April 14, 2012 (EDT)

Holy CRAP! I'm using IE to look at the site, and the Home page is three screens wide!

I am using IE Version 8.0.7601.17514 because I'm at school accessing my home computer through logmein via Firefox and it continusly crashes and lags out while it tries to figure out what is going on, and there is a major problem with our home page from IE. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 15:03, April 13, 2012 (EDT)

It acting like the lines in the boxes have a "white-space: nowrap;" css someplace. I haven't found it yet though. It can't be the instances of " • " because there is a space at the begining of the sequence that screams break here if needed. I also vaguely remember someone adding a "white-space: nowrap;" css someplace, but I cannot remember where. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 15:29, April 13, 2012 (EDT)

Same problem with IE9. Firefox and Chrome not displaying the same problem. Bladedge (Contributions • Message) 17:42, April 13, 2012 (EDT)

Fixed on IE9 anyways.. Very weird IE wasn't acknowledging the space at the start of " • " as where I wanted it to break lines.. I guess it doesn't really matter where the bullets end up.. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 18:03, April 13, 2012 (EDT)

Network Issues

I removed the "network problems" notice from the homepage. I think it was put there because of the IP address issues, correct? The changes I have now in place should prevent that from happening again. --Xevo (Contributions • Message) 00:21, September 1, 2012 (EDT)

I take it we're leaving that notice there but hiding it for the next time the issue pops up? It is a good idea, since I did notice alot of people ask in the IRC even before I made the notice. Lets hope it stays fixed. Yawgmoth ( IRC • Message ) 05:19, September 1, 2012 (EDT)

Adding in DDOStore on Twitter feed...

Sure, it still needs some formating and perhaps a new location, BUT I like the idea and think it should stay... Opinions, comments, ideas? ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 21:32, September 18, 2012 (EDT)

buha, thats horrible. if that was on the sidebar maybe i can live with that but uh, well..., this is really just one person's opinion but i dont enjoy pay to win aspect of this game. i hate rez cakes , xp pots and all kinds of cheat items, i am really anti-DDO store person and i dont think im the only one. don't know if the wiki really need to promote the store thingy at all.

yoko5000 (Contributions • Message) 02:37, September 19, 2012 (EDT)

I don't like it for two main reasons: Firstly, it doesn't look nice, and disrupts the layout of the front page of the wiki. Secondly, the question is: Why should the ddowiki advertize the ddostore using a third party website's (i.e. twitter.com) news feed? Krlkch (Contributions • Message) 07:22, September 19, 2012 (EDT)

The whole purpose I thought it might be nice to have, is they mostly post their free weekly item, and most people like free stuff. I was starting to get annoyed with everyone asking "What's this weeks free item from the store?" or "Where can i find the free codes for the ddo store?". I'm not opposed to moving it to the DDO_Store page itself if you think the free stuff from the store is offensive.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 07:42, September 19, 2012 (EDT)

Sidebar, bottom of the page with a section "Official News Feed" or something, it its own page and have the home page and/or store page link to it, but Not in the header of the site and not part of any wiki pages. Bladedge (Contributions • Message) 16:53, September 19, 2012 (EDT)

removed it and now its linked to Twitter feeds page. dont get me wrong, twitter widget itself is cool. one can get all turbine tweets at one place without creating twitter account and following them, and you can put your personal tweets on your user page if you are into it. yea but certain percentage of people dont like store thing (me included) and certain percentage of people dont like SNS. having page designated for it and maybe link from the top page is safer bet IMO. and you know what, if we are gonna put any kind of DDO feeds on our top page, 1st thing we need to have is the launcher RSS. http://rss.ddo.com/index.php?option=com_bca-rss-syndicator&feed_id=1 it is legit turbine domain, you get most important info such as server down time, quest closure etc (forum chronicle fluff and TP sales too though, woo...)

yoko5000 (Contributions • Message) 00:16, September 20, 2012 (EDT)

Mabar is on

Started just a few minutes ago - about 2pm EDT

Dissaperance of outfits

Due to some change in game, the pre U-17 non-named outfits are disappearing. The details are unknown - it is unknown if they are already gone, or if they disappear on character or account log-in; it is unknown if it's possible to restore them. The devs are investigating the issue

Until it is solved, some people may appreciate a warning that logging in may cost them all their outfits. Would it be appropriate to put one somewhere on the main page?

Suggestion for Player Characters section

the 'Player Characters' section does not have the iconic races. It seems it would make sense to include them since the other races are there.

Done, Ionic races added Bladedge (Contributions • Message) 01:42, January 7, 2014 (EST)

U21 Box Typo

Unfortunately I can't fix it, but there's a typo in the box: "Festival of the Traveler - from March 20gh through 27th" (error in bold). Habreno (Contributions • Message) 00:30, April 1, 2014 (EDT)

Done, fixed in Template:News/Update 21. --Cru121 (Contributions • Message) 04:09, April 1, 2014 (EDT)