Talk:Main Page/editcopy

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Archive

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• February-May 2007
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• December 2007-April 2008
• April 2008-December 2008
• January 2009-June 2009
• July 2009-December 2009
• January 2010-June 2010
• June 2010-December 2010
• January 2011-December 2011

GW campaigns image files

I suggest we decrease the size (or only the width) of the images of the GW campaigns at the top of the page. Just a bit smaler and it would make the page fit perfectly on my 1024x768 screen. Since the adition of the last image, GW Beyond, the main page is the only page on the wiki I've seen to have a horizontal scroll bar. Could this be a good idea maybe ? Magnum 19:18, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

this was already brought up and can be found in the archives as to reasons why everything is the way it is.- Zesbeer 21:24, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Halloween 2012

is everyone ok with using last years theme?- Zesbeer 20:32, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. (I've updated the editcopy). Don't forget to edit the css too.

/* Holiday theme changes */
div#p-logo a { background-image: url(/images/7/77/User_Phnzdvn_Halloween_Logo_High_Res.png) !important; }

Also I've tinkered with a modernised mainpage ala gw2w at User:Chieftain Alex/sandbox/Main page (needs custom css). Chieftain Alex 09:53, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that background is the best one but it at least looks nice. - Zesbeer 21:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah I was clueless for the background, ideally the image would be transparent/have fade to white edges + gotta be big enough that it doesn't pixellate. (tried a Nika version) Anyhoo go go halloween edit copy. Chieftain Alex 21:22, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Wintersday 2012

Suggested snazzy theme. This would again require an additional bit of css for the common.css - I've put all the wintersday related css stuff here (copy from below the nowiki bit to the end, above the nowiki close).

The code would be mostly copied from User:Chieftain Alex/sandbox/Main page/Wintersday, except we'd swap {{:User:Chieftain Alex/sandbox/Main page/activities}} to {{:Main Page/activities}} (and then change the display of the activities template for a bit..) --Chieftain Alex 14:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

A bit slow on the update nowadays aren't we :/ 77.97.208.117 12:03, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

CNY

Here is a tiny warning, come Thursday I'm probably going to put User:Chieftain Alex/sandbox/Main page/CNY + the appropriate css onto the mainpage. -Chieftain Alex 12:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Featured article

It seems for some reason Main Page/featured article/automated isn't automatically displaying a featured article on Main Page, which is supposedly Scarab Plague this week. --Silver Edge 05:31, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Has been fixed. --Silver Edge 07:21, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Wintersday 2013

Similar to last years version. Change colours + pictures as you want, we'll put it up near the 19th of dec. -Chieftain Alex 00:54, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

That does not look like previous years of wintersday.. It messes with my eyes, the way it is now... Rodan (talk) 03:45, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

any feedback is good feedback. ;) -Chieftain Alex 11:52, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it's primarily the border colour on every section that causes eye straining. - Infinite - talk 14:32, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I reckon that Rodan's "messes with my eyes the way it is now" @ 3:45 was referring to [1], whereas you seem to be commenting on the 3:46 version [2].

I think it would be fair to say that the border colour is pretty awful on the current (3:46) version + needs tweaking. -Chieftain Alex 14:39, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I was talking about this one... I reverted it back to the old way that gives my brain less of a headache. Images behind all that content reminds me of wikia's advertisements sometimes and people complain about that. They don't listen and I hope you do. Rodan (talk) 19:30, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, right, the GW2W themed design. I didn't even stop to think about it, to be fair. - Infinite - talk 19:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

update

who updates main page with edit copy or festival themes these days? ^_^ --Falconeye (talk) 02:08, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Huh, great question. I've never actually looked at the process myself. It seems there's some nice comparison tools. When I finally settle down for the night, I'll take another gander. If I'm missing any special holiday, let me know and I'll go through the history and find a relevant theme. G R E E N E R 05:35, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Alex or SE might know more. --Falconeye (talk) 06:14, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

It looks like an easy copy/paste. Any reason why the font is set to 90%? I'm feeling even older than I am staring at it. I'll probably move that back to 100%. Any other changes you'd like done before I copy it over? G R E E N E R 07:48, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Besides Mad King's Day, Wintersday, Canthan Day... none at the moment. --Falconeye (talk) 05:22, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Alright. I'll copy it over when the Guide to PvP is up and going. It'll be a sad day for this wiki when we place a red-link on the main page! G R E E N E R 08:27, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

You know you've had your share of GW when you call Halloween "Mad King's Day" :D Jeree95 (talk) 14:27, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

"Updates, news and events" section

Considering how there are very few of the three posted items upcoming for the game, perhaps we can put that square to better use? For example, while the link to Third-party programs may fit on the front page, it definitely doesn't fit under such a title as we currently have.

What sections/information would you all like to to see on the front page? Or how else can we arrange things? G R E E N E R 04:04, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

That section can be renamed "Other" or "Miscellaneous" and moved to the bottom right corner of the page. --Silver Edge 09:49, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I'd suggest to move the Special events link somewhere else then. Into the "Latest in-game activities" box maybe. It kinda belongs to those topics anyway. Steve1 (talk) 19:19, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't think that the third party programs link really fits with the other items in that box. -Chieftain Alex 11:20, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Current diff

(Diff for reference). I don't agree with most of the changes currently proposed. Going through them one by one:

Suggest no:

1. "New to Guild Wars?" - not convinced its any better.
2. Moving guides to the top of the currently named "game basics" box - the guides aren't as well written as Profession/Attribute/Skill (elite skill and build articles are pretty basic tbh, though there isn't much else to write about them)
3. Addition of Guide to making a build - making a good build is difficult. I don't think any guide can be good for making builds.
4. Adding a link to Third-party programs - if this belongs anywhere on the page, it does not belong right next to the official update notes and ArenaNet links. Saying that though, it doesn't really fit with any of the other links on the page.
5. Adding a link to a formerly deleted article, "Guide to PvP" - the page doesn't even exist, and we don't need red links on the main page.
6. Adding a link to Feedback:Main - once upon a time we had a link in the sidebar to the feedback pages. We removed it when ArenaNet said they weren't going to do anything with it. Content in this namespace isn't arranged in a way that makes it useful. I don't think that this content requires a new link from the main page either.

Unconvinced one way or the other:

1. Making the font smaller (90%) to pack everything in - we could do this. We just need to bear in mind differences in text sizes between wiki skins. Font sizes vary a lot here. Monobook: UI font size is 11.47px, with article text at 12.7px. Vector: UI font size is 12px, with article text at 14px. For monobook, applying 90% ends up even smaller than the UI text.

Suggest yes:

1. Guide to tutorial areas - we don't really have anything to link the "Professions • Attributes • Skills • Elite skills • Builds" bullets together at the moment, this could work.

It sounds like I'm going all Attila here I know. -Chieftain Alex 11:47, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Following on from the discussion about the Feedback:Main link removal from the sidebar here, perhaps maybe have it reworded to "Archived Feedback" or something then? I'd say it's still semi-relevant to keep somewhat visible, as although it's just in maintenance mode, it is still available for suggestion in the form of improving automation within the game, which I think is something still relevant to keep on the main page of the official wiki about the game. -- Lacky 10:40, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm in favor of expanding guide/walkthrough/builds section. --Falconeye (talk) 01:16, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

freshening up

There's a lot of stuff that seems out of date or just useless on the main page these days. I've put a few suggestions down here, but I'd like to see if anyone else has any ideas. horrible | contribs 21:16, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the calendar, I would suggest if possible including the first week of the following month, so it remains useful on the last day of a month. - Tanetris (talk) 00:11, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Good idea, seems useful. I'll look into making a rolling calendar instead of a static monthly one. horrible | contribs 13:24, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Excellent idea from Tanetris and I agree it would be useful. Plus I am in favor of a "refreshed" felling of our main page Tikka LeFem talk (talk) 23:34, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Updated the calendar to include surrounding weeks, and moved all templates out of my sandboxes and into the mainspace. Should be good to go, save adding edit protection horrible 16:32, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

Can you make the header bar the same blue too? Justice (talk) 09:40, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Page refactoring + Mobile compatibility + Festival Auto Styling

Hey folks - I've created an updated version of the main page here. Due to substantial changes in how the page is actually built, I figure it might be worthwhile to discuss rather than just adding it.
Refactoring
The old page used wikitables to form the page layout - while these tried-and-true structures have been used on this wiki for the better part of two decades, I opted to swap these out with subpage templates (see /Box) to facilitate mobile styling and make the page itself easier to update for people less familiar with the gritty aspects of wikis.
Mobile compatibility
So, uh, not sure if you've ever looked at the main page on a phone, but the table layout is really, really ugly and is hard to actually use as intended. By replacing this with an automatically resizing flexbox (which has been standard for like, a decade), each section will best fill the available space, sacrificing our 3-columnn layout for a 2-column or 1-column one depending on space available.
Festival Auto Styling
This is more of a thing that I would like to change, but isn't necessarily needed. I've added checks so that - during halloween and wintersday - the page will automatically apply alternative styles (see this and this for revisions showing Wintersday and Halloween respectively) - which I think is going to be more consistent and requires far less direct input from sysops/bcrats.
New Subpages
So, in addition to the changes to Main Page, there are three new subpages that we'd have to move and protect:

1. User:Horrible/MPR/Box -> Main Page/Box - these are going to replace the tables and IMO these belong separate the most. These could be changed to inline divs, but I think that would negatively impact the edit-ability of the page.
2. User:Horrible/MPR/Stylesheet -> Main Page/Stylesheet - this one is the most hacky, and would benefit the most from sysop involvement: Replacing these inline styles with global classes for the main page + festivals that can be swapped would remove the need for this subpage and would reduce the size of boxes and header pages - if these css changes seem reasonable, I can quickly throw together the classes it would need and update the logic to use classes rather than dynamic inline styles.
3. User:Horrible/MPR/Header -> Main Page/Header - this is the one I'd be most fine just re-incorporating. The only issue is that it's currently about 3x as large as it used to be (while the transcluded portion is about the same) - i'd push for the classes change mentioned in #2 if this is to be re-incorporated into the main page.

horrible 03:56, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

wikidiff here horrible 04:07, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't think making it more festive is really the style of front page I want when I come to the wiki. The event calender thing is a nice addition though. The formatting looks the same on my phone. Justice (talk) 06:26, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the changes I'm proposing are at this location and not the current editcopy. The difference between flex boxes and wikitables should be readily apparent on mobile devices. horrible 13:11, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Is it not feasible to keep the 'Latest in-game activities' box on the upper-right when there's room for 3 across? It is throwing me off something fierce to have it on the left side after a decade+ of expecting it on the upper-right. Does look nice at smaller widths though, and the automation of decoration for holidays would be handy (we've been slacking on that for a couple years now) - Tanetris (talk) 14:11, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Went ahead and made some minor styling tweaks so that it hopefully stays in that top row longer.

For further changes, would it make more sense for the featured page article to shrink first so that it fills 1 column instead of 2 when the page transitions from 3-column to 2-column layout? CSS isn't my forte so I'm not sure if that's possible or not, but I can look into it. horrible 19:31, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

I dig it as it stands currently. At 3-wide, it's the same layout everyone's been used to for a decade. At 2-wide, it's the featured article across the top, 3 rows of 2 boxes, and then the calender across the bottom. And of course at 1-wide it's just a column straight down. Seems like a pretty straightforward improvement to me, but I'll poke at some people who actually browse on mobile (and at some of the more code-minded of the admins, after the holiday, about the CSS change. I can in a pinch, but I'm not super-comfortable with it if Something Goes Wrong(tm)). - Tanetris (talk) 12:44, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Horrible, if you could move your code's subpages to the Template namespace, and then update your code to call them from there, that would be appreciated. Greener (talk) 17:54, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Done, I hope the name changes make sense: Template:Content_Box - Template:Festival_Stylesheet - Template:Main_Page_Header. I added a bit of a description to make them more fitting as templates, let me know if I should clarify anything else. horrible 22:56, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the moves. It turns out that it'll be easier for me to change their locations again, rather than update the many references in the code I'm about to copy over. I should have thought that part out a bit more. Greener (talk) 17:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Looks good. -86.182.220.32 22:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I overlooked this earlier when checking, but it seems like the CSS changes will also have to be added to MediaWiki:Mobile.css for them to show up properly on mobile. I quickly checked with Stylus and it should be fine just copying and pasting the changes from revision 2682617 to the Mobile CSS page. horrible 22:59, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The mobile.css has been updated. Thanks for flagging that. Greener (talk) 02:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Looks great on my phone now, thanks! horrible 04:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

First, kudos for making the main page more mobile-friendly! I frequently like to check only daily activities and such on the main page while I'm in game and this makes using my phone to do so much more of a palatable option. The only drawback is that on a computer screen there is a lot of white space and scrolling due to the three-row two-column layout. I didn't see this change being discussed before implemented (just a user and former editor here), or I would have mentioned it then. The layout is fairly cumbersome as a consequence for people not on mobile devices. I think the benefit of mobile usage outweighs the cumbersomeness of the PC view, but I thought I'd bring it up if it was an easy thing to get both: good mobile viewing and still three columns. I do like the featured article stretched across the top, though. And if nobody agrees with me or the change is too difficult, no worries. I'm still a fan of the update! Thanks for the work you put in on it! Mohnzh say what? 16:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Hey Mohnzh, I'm having trouble reproducing what you're describing. Could you help us out by telling us the browser that you're using and the resolution? And just in case this is a caching issue, could you try doing a hard refresh when on the main page? (e.g. Ctrl + Shift + R on Chrome).Greener (talk) 17:35, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Same here. On mobile, it's a vast improvement. On my PC things look unchanged tbh. No problem with white spaces whatsoever. Steve1 (talk) 18:58, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Looks like this is something that happens with themes other than monobook: Vector (2022) - Vector (2010) - Minerva.

They all have styling that sets a smaller max-width for article content, as well as enough padding that the flexboxes will always swap to the two-column layout. We can try messing with the width/min-width setting on the boxes so that they play nicer with alternative themes, but everything I've tried so far that works for them ends up making monobook look a lot worse. horrible 22:54, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

A potential "fix" to the content-frame-outer class: reducing min-width to something like 300px, removing the border and margin, and adding a pseudoborder with box-shadow:box-shadow: inset 0 0 0 2px #FFF,inset 0 0 0 3px #AAA; (a similar tactic is used atm to give the header its double border). monobook minerva vector

This doesn't look identical to the old layout, but it retains the 3-box format at the alternative styles' max-width and still fits for monobook. It does make the calendar look even more out of place, though.horrible 06:04, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

The common.css has been updated and seems to hold up properly. The mobile.css has not been updated. If you find time, could you check to see if the mobile version would work under similar changes? I'll also note that the festival colours etc. reference the border, which we have now removed. Greener (talk) 03:52, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Whatever you did, it's back to the normal 3-column layout on my laptop and improved layout on phone. I can check the other PC I was using on Monday. It has a narrower screen than my laptop. Great work! Mohnzh say what? 07:24, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

"Canthan New Year"

A stray "Canthan New Year" can be found on the main page where it probably shouldn't be. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/443226508711034881/1072158102247456930/image.png Sime (talk) 15:55, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

It should be fixed now, thanks for catching that! The change shouldn't break anything and should already be effective, but definitely give a heads-up if you see anything else wonky! horrible 16:05, 6 February 2023 (UTC)