Main Page Revamp

[Alumina]

Hi guys, it's my spring break so I decided as a little project I'll revamp the wiki's main page so it looks super pretty, awesome, informative and more intuitive to find things quickly.

I have a basic idea of what needs to be put on there, like characters, equipment, news, version updates, etc. and I'll put sprites and make them clickable links and all that jazz, but my biggest problem is the placement of such items and what should go on there. I made some bare bones thing here as an example: http://defendersquest.wikia.com/wiki/User:Aluminaworks It's currently kinda messed up, but I hope it gets the general idea across.

So basically, what should go on the front page, and where?

[madness]

On my opinion, maybe there should be a list with stategical tips for each stage and/or some general observations on the cons and pros of each character/unit. It's rolling smoothly though, I like the clickable character names in the middle.

Maybe a more suitable background (like the sides-not the text- being filled with clouds and lightings). That's just me though.

[larsiusprime]

Hey! Glad someone wants to help spruce up the wiki

For the front page, I think the most important categories would probably be something like:

• Summary - Quick blurb about the game. One-sentence description of the game (something to the effect of "it's a TD/RPG!"), release date, company, link to website, price, current version, etc.
• Gameplay - Short section describing the basic details of the game, including inline links to words like class, battle, overworld, etc.
• Version History - Links to various release versions and their changes (I can supply this info)
• Features - A section filled with links to other pages, primarily.

Under features perhaps you'd see something like this:

• Story (page contains plot summary and links to character pages)
• Battle System (page contains battle system description and links to sub-features)
• Overworld (page contains world map and links to entries about towns/battles)
• Towns (page explains towns and links to town entries or has a table of towns)
• Classes (page explains character classes, links to each one)

Those are just some random thoughts. I've never put a wiki together before, but if you're looking for some ideas maybe that will help?

Also, we should leave a prominent link to the "Wiki fodder" section and some kind of invitation to new users to help us edit it

[delve]

Also, we should leave a prominent link to the "Wiki fodder" section and some kind of invitation to new users to help us edit it

This. The value of a wiki is directly proportional to the number of editors.

[Alumina]

On my opinion, maybe there should be a list with stategical tips for each stage and/or some general observations on the cons and pros of each character/unit. It's rolling smoothly though, I like the clickable character names in the middle.

Maybe a more suitable background (like the sides-not the text- being filled with clouds and lightings). That's just me though.

Thanks. As for the background, that's not something that can be exactly defined on the main page, I haven't checked but it's likely on the "Mediawiki:Common.css" page. If so, I can't edit that page (it's protected for a good reason). If it's server defined then I can't do anything about that for sure.

Hey! Glad someone wants to help spruce up the wiki

For the front page, I think the most important categories would probably be something like:

• Summary - Quick blurb about the game. One-sentence description of the game (something to the effect of "it's a TD/RPG!"), release date, company, link to website, price, current version, etc.
• Gameplay - Short section describing the basic details of the game, including inline links to words like class, battle, overworld, etc.
• Version History - Links to various release versions and their changes (I can supply this info)
• Features - A section filled with links to other pages, primarily.

Under features perhaps you'd see something like this:

• Story (page contains plot summary and links to character pages)
• Battle System (page contains battle system description and links to sub-features)
• Overworld (page contains world map and links to entries about towns/battles)
• Towns (page explains towns and links to town entries or has a table of towns)
• Classes (page explains character classes, links to each one)

Those are just some random thoughts. I've never put a wiki together before, but if you're looking for some ideas maybe that will help?

Also, we should leave a prominent link to the "Wiki fodder" section and some kind of invitation to new users to help us edit it

Thanks a lot, I'll see if I can add all this later. My main goal is to put the most important things (such as the summary and updates) right at the top so when someone visits they will automatically see it all without having to scroll down.


Also, if you want to prominently show the "Wiki fodder" section (or anything else for that matter), I would also suggest putting a note on the "Mediawiki:Sitenotice" page. This page's text will always be put on the top of every page followed by a horizontal line break. (note: all mediawiki pages are default admin/sysop edit only) I'm not sure if wikia lets you do that (from what I saw they don't have sidebars) but it's worth a shot.

This. The value of a wiki is directly proportional to the number of editors.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

[larsiusprime]

I'm completely unfamiliar with wikia's editing system and wikis in general, so feel free to take the lead if you know anything about this stuff at all

[Alumina]

I've worked on wikis for a while (I can't really remember when I started, maybe 4 years ago on and off), but they were hosted on the same site so it's a bit different from wikia's.
Also for the sitenotice thing, I can't personally touch it, "Mediawiki:" pages are auto-locked to normal user by default,so admin/sysop only. If you have time (and trust me I suppose) you can paste something in and see if it works:

Code: Select all

<div style="text-align: center;">Welcome to the Defender's Quest Wiki!  If you are new and want to help contribute, check out the [http://www.defendersquest.com/theforum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=39 wiki fodder] thread on the forums.</div>

this is the equivalent of

Welcome to the Defender's Quest Wiki! If you are new and want to help contribute, check out the wiki fodder thread on the forums. (centered)

If it works it will show up on the top of every page automatically.

Anyway, I added a template that will let you click the image/sprite and it will take you to the page instead of the page of the image (not my code, took it off the wikimedia project website). I also started fixing up the main page test I had going some more, but I ran into a few snags (read:it looks really messed up now) so I'll have to fix that up later.

[larsiusprime]

Cool! Thanks for that, I'll try to put it up If you're gonna be sticking around and working on the wiki for a while, then I'll talk to Anthony and see about getting you some more privileges/permissions on the wiki

He's at GDC though, so it might take a while to hear back. In the meantime if you have any "admin" requests, forward 'em to me

[larsiusprime]

Hey guys -

Noticing a lot of you seem to be painstakingly cropping out the backgrounds from images. To that end, I'll try to do a raw art-file dump on the wiki fodder thread tomorrow to save you guys some time

[Alumina]

Cool! Thanks for that, I'll try to put it up If you're gonna be sticking around and working on the wiki for a while, then I'll talk to Anthony and see about getting you some more privileges/permissions on the wiki

He's at GDC though, so it might take a while to hear back. In the meantime if you have any "admin" requests, forward 'em to me

I don't mind sticking around for a while for the wiki, the only thing is when I get back to school I'm going to get busy again, but I'd be happy to help out with templates and bigger stuff that people would need help with.

Hey guys -

Noticing a lot of you seem to be painstakingly cropping out the backgrounds from images. To that end, I'll try to do a raw art-file dump on the wiki fodder thread tomorrow to save you guys some time

Thanks a lot, I get really nick-picky about images so I ended up cleaning some up. In fact I'm pretty sure that was all me lol.
Perhaps that was more out of habit - I've worked on some other game wikis and I had to find a way to reverse engineer the files to get a hold of the images, and then clean them up because they were terrible and fuzzy and vectorable so it looked even more terrible when I tried to make a flat image out of it. Now that was time consuming.

If it makes you feel better, it took me like a total of 2 minutes per image, your art was so nice and clean that the select tool I was using was able to latch on everything I wanted about 99% of the time.


Anyway, I updated my test page again, and I think I fixed the problems with it mis-aligning and I THINK I fixed the problem that made it look funky on certain browsers (coughoperacough).
I just need a little blurb on gameplay and a few other things.

[nothlione]

Hey guys! I don't know if Alumina is still interested in this project, but I did a little sketch for the main page based on his/her work. It's on http://defendersquest.wikia.com/wiki/Us ... ne/sandbox

It's just an initial idea, nothing too elaborate... I'm totally open to criticism on what should be changed. The list available in "Features" has the items I could think at the time, it's not definitive. By the way, Alumina used images for the Feature section, I'm using a simple bulleted list (mainly because it's easier to change in case we decide to add more articles to it), please send feedback on what's better.

I'm thinking about putting a field with the most important features -- things people always look for, like Battles, Equipment, Classes, with a 100x100 image for each one of them, right at the page's beginning. I know we need some other stuff in the page too... wikis usually have a featured article (dunno if it would be good or not), we could have something like a gallery, like we have now. I don't know how the gameplay section would work if put on the main page. (maybe explain that it rolls like a normal TD but the towers are characters that level up, need to be recruited and equipped like in a RPG?) Anyway, there are infinite possibilities, please supply me with feedback.

Oh, English is not my native language, I also accept criticism on gramatical errors/expressions that don't feel natural. Thanks!

[larsiusprime]

I like it pretty well!

Gives a lot of good jumping-off points. If I think of any tweaks, I'll let you know but I'd go ahead and push it live for now and we'll fine-tune it later if someone thinks of something.

[nothlione]

Okay, it's live

Let me know if you want something changed. Meanwhile, I'm gonna fill it with some more content.