Forum:2010 main page redesign

Ready for the new series, I have designed a new home page here, what do you think? --Rbfskywalker 12:32, January 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * seems good, though i think we should have a big debate about what should change, what shouldn't etc Excalibur-117 13:16, January 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree, but can I make a suggestion regarding the image placeholder thingys, instead of having the caption to the side of the image, what about having it in the middle, and a colour code for Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, just for the heading boxes. All in all looks good. Good Work. --Bigshowbower 13:33, January 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * Colour codes seem like a great idea, how about blue for Who, purple for Sarha Jane and then maybe red for Torchwood? I am not 100% sure how to move the names on the boxes, I borrowed them from another wiki. --Rbfskywalker 14:13, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

I like it, the only thing i have a problem with is the placement of the news, but i could get used to it Geffe71 14:55, January 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * I put the news on the right as there is currently a lot of white space to the right of it in ti's current location.--Rbfskywalker 16:09, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Seems good so far, only problem i've got is that the character pics seem sorta unaligned and messy but otherwise good job. Oh, and don't we need one for the k-9 as well?.Excalibur-117 18:02, January 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not even sure if K-9 is in the Doctor Who universe. Haven't even seen it, actually. --Yowuza yadderhouse | meh 18:22, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Don't think anyone has, in all honesty, but if the admin say it's in then it's in.And if we have to we can just cry Alternate/Pararell Universe. Actually, other than the TV shows themselves, noting else in the entire DW universe is set down as canon, all opinion based. Excalibur-117 18:25, January 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * It's just that it doesn't look very Doctor Who-ish to me. --Yowuza yadderhouse | meh 18:41, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

That's crappy American TV for ya. Excalibur-117 18:42, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

It's not really intended to be. They made a kids show on Jetix and wanted K9 for their styoline. What makes it different is that the other three shows (Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Advetnures) all under the BBC and that follow where the classic Who left off, and they're all specially-linked shows that all fit into the main Whotinuity.

I do think there should be a different section for things such as K9, which can be consiodered parallels to the main continuity. We know it will never reference Doctor Who and vice versa. There should be the main continuity for certain things, and then the parallel continuity for others things that have little to do with the TV series, or make little connection/big contraditction.

I love your design of the homepage, too. Delton Menace 20:24, January 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Why have the "Other adventures" been relegated to the bottom of the page, the novels, comics, audio dramas are produced throughout the year and they are given equal coverage on this wiki as the TV series, they are also valid per our canon policy as the TV series, and yet they've been shoved down the bottom of the page into "Other adventures"?
 * I know that many new users may view these as somehow less than the TV series, but equally new users to this wiki may have a preference for the audios, novels or comics. So I'm just a little concerned we are playing favourites over one medium.
 * The placement of the news seems to suggest it has more emphasis than other parts of this wiki, the same seems to go for the feature article and quote of the week, both which are designed to lead people off to other parts of the wiki have been pushed down below the news section.
 * The design is interesting and different, though as I've said I'm concerned about how much of the page has been given over one particular section of Doctor Who production. --Tangerineduel 02:46, January 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Let's see


 * The Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventure sections seem to take up a lot of space. As Tangerineduel says, they may be favoured by some users, but they're not the only Doctor Who related topics.


 * On a related issue, the Other Issues is being shoved down to the bottom.


 * The pictures of the characters don't seem to add the episode descriptions, and either you're going to have to put all the characters or add the characters based on personal opinion of importance.


 * Other than that the layout doesn't bother me. Azes13 04:46, January 3, 2010 (UTC)

Overall it looks good, but I have some thoughts and concerns:
 * I'm going to part company with Tangerineduel regarding the concern over one media being given preference. Although as noted all media are created equal in this wiki (well, at least BBC- or creator-licensed, at any rate), the fact remains that the 4 TV series are dominant and will be what the vast majority of users will want to look for first -- as it is, the K-9 series needs to be taken out of the "Other Adventures" section and treated equally to the others. If we give the same treatment to the other media, we end up with an unacceptably long and cluttered home page. As it is, having 4 sections for the TV series is pushing things a little.
 * That said, Tangerineduel's concern about the other media being treated dismissively is a very valid one. I think the "Other Adventures" section should be given a rethink, as the other media shouldn't just be dismissed as gallery items. There must be some way to give them some added prominence.
 * I like the idea of having the news headlines on the right side. Not everyone is aware of the News Page (I'm sure some folks think it died when OG was discontinued last summer), and I think having the headlines up top works. I might suggest, however, maybe only listing the 10 most recent headlines.
 * I don't think we need the "Popular Categories" section. I really am not convinced anyone cares or pays attention to such trivia, so if something needs to be trimmed, text-wise, I'd say that could go. (I'm not a big fan of the Quote either, but I know lots of people like those types of things.)
 * We don't need to have the headshots of the lead characters in the TV sections. I have some fair use concerns, plus it just makes things clunky and SJA in particular looks top-heavy because of its large cast. If there's one thing I would like to see removed above all else, it's these images. We don't need them.
 * I just noticed the comments regarding the K-9 TV series. First, the pilot episode has been broadcast in Europe, so it's now a going concern. Second, our place is not to judge whether a certain production is "in the Doctor Who universe" or whether it's any good or not. It's licensed by the creators and that therefore makes it as valid as any of the Big Finish, BBV, Reeltime and, frankly, BBC productions we feature on this wiki. 23skidoo 14:45, January 4, 2010 (UTC)

I think the design gains a lot from being re-arranged a bit and from dropping the character boxes, like I did here. --Cartoonmoney 12:56, January 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * Whop, also included a box to link to the other language Doctor Who wikias. (see this discussion) --Cartoonmoney 13:02, January 11, 2010 (UTC)


 * Removing the character boxes improves the page somewhat, though it doesn't solve the larger issue of the 'Other adventures' (as I've noted above). --Tangerineduel 13:12, January 11, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hm. I've made some more tweaks and will have a go at something that solves that problem. --Cartoonmoney 13:20, January 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * Here we go. --Cartoonmoney 13:52, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

The third version above is my favourite. You can't deny how clean and more organized that it looks. It would be nice to see something like that as the main page, the new is easier to find, and you don't have to scroll halfway down the page to find "Recent Advetnures..." Delton Menace 03:03, January 12, 2010 (UTC)


 * I have always disliked how "messy" the pictures are in the "recent adventures" section, and Cartoonmoney's revision, while it has its strengths, only emphasizes the disorder by making the pictures even larger. I think it should be more compact, and towards that end I give you Template:Portal. This template forces all images into the same size box and keep things tidy. Here's an example of how it could work:

 Latest televised adventures

 Latest adventures in other media


 * Note a few things here. First, this points out the need (that has always existed) to create special thumbnails of photos for the front page links. We can't continue, as we have always done, trying to resize existing photos from the main pages of the adventure in question. TV story pictures tend to be somethin close to 16:9 aspect ratio, which makes them obviously "shorter" than images of CD covers, which are essentially 4:3. Hence, as with the Children of Earth photo above, you get a lot of nasty white space. For the main page only, we must therefore get in the practice of creating unique thumbnails, perhaps derived from the main infobox images on the story pages, but nevertheless conforming to a basically 4:3 ratio. Also, to use this new template effectively we'd generally want to stick to a rigit file format and naming convention for ease of use. This template balks, but doesn't necessarily refuse to use, the .png format. And .png is way overkill for thumbnails anyway. Simple .jpg will do. And the names of some of these images are obscure, to put it mildly. A simple naming convention of NameOfAdventureThumb.jpg will help make it so much easier to whoever regularly maintains the page.


 * Note, too, that it currently does a maximum of an "8-up" display. Two rows of four is currently all you get. This probably isn't enough. I found myself having to pick and choose between different lines. How have we determined, for instance, that the "current" BBC Audio is in fact the latest Torchwood one? Isn't there a case for saying that The Hornet's Nest (part 5) is also the most current? Or that the latest Tennant-read direct-to-audio BBCA is in fact more current than the TWA thing? And IDW has often had two or three lines of comics coming out in the same month, not to mention the fact of having Doctor Who Adventures and Doctor Who Magazine comic strips running simultaneously. There just seem to be some things we're missing, and we need to have a policy for deciding what goes in and what doesn't.


 * In order to alter this template (or, in fact, create new variations based on the required number of "slots"), we have to first finalize precisely what we want to feature on the main page, something I'm not sure we absolutely know right now.


 * I'd go farther, though, and suggest it'd be better if we didn't regularly change the images for the televised episodes. Frankly, I think it'd be cleaner to just have the logos there. Users will become familiar with hitting the show logo if they want to go to the latest episode. I can see the value of retaining unique images for (some of) the spin-off media, as there's no unique logo for different parts of the BF and BBC audio range. And as a bonus, the main images for most of the spin-off stuff fit into this template without alteration into a thumbnail. But as for the four main shows, the best path would be to simply make up four, high-quality thumbnails of the show's logo and leave it at that.


 * I've included the televised adventures in this template only to display the problems widescreen pictures bring. In fact, I wouldn't even have the televised episodes in this template at all. I'd just have the four logos imagemapped to the latest episode, quite outside this template. Then, when you clicked on the logo, it'd go directly to the latest episode. Hence something like:


 * Sadly, we don't have good, transparent logos currently on the site, so you'll have to use your imagination. I've whipped up a quick transparent image of the new "TARDIS logo" as an example. Imagine that there are three other logos right beside this one, floating borderless above the boxes for the "other media" entries. We'd thereby give the televised episodes prominence and a regular "appearance" on the site, because they're what most users will be interested in.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍ 19:59, January 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Your portal would work even better (I think) if you were to make it so that clicking on the image would take you to the same place as the link underneath. It's intuitive to click on the picture to go there... not to a bigger version of the picture. :) -- sulfur 20:26, January 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh I agree. Indeed quite doable and the way I'd want to alter the template. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I wouldn't want any text under any of the boxes, save perhaps for the name of the range. The pictures in the template should work just like my new li'l TARDIS logo, above. But before I invest time in making that somewhat extensive change, I'd wanna get firm consensus on both the concept and the exact number of things we'd want to include.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍ 21:27, January 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * Just for the sake of visualization, here's an better idea of what I was trying to describe above. Note that I haven't bothered to link the logos to specific stories, as would be the idea. This is just for getting a better "picture" of the concept. Also, these shouldn't be regarded as the final logo images; they're just ones I knocked together quickly. I've also rendered them in monochrome, because the "natural" colors of these things actually clash quite a bit. Setting them all black and white makes the row "classier".

 Latest televised adventures

 Latest adventures in other media

 Czech Out  ☎ | ✍ 23:43, January 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * I rather like Cartoonmoney's third/most recent working of the Main page.
 * CzechOut's pictorially based navigation is good, but it seems to me it relies too heavily on small images. However the idea of using logos rather than images does have merit.
 * On Cartoonmoney's the use of text beside the stories would allow for further wikilinking out onto the site at large rather than just to the story pages a visitor to the front page could be led off to several different pages, not just the story page but articles linked within the text of the various descriptions. As for the different image sizes, I really don't mind them, they create some difference throughout the page, further helping to highlight the different adventures. --Tangerineduel 12:59, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

how do you get a special page for your homepage design? I'd like to design one myself. What we probably should do though is make up a wishlist of what we want for the new homepage, then set about designing it. We should definately stick with the picture navigation though.Excalibur-117 15:16, January 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * Just put it in a subpage to your userpage. i.e. User:Excalibur-117/homepage. --Cartoonmoney 15:26, January 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * Cheers. Excalibur-117 15:28, January 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * Cartoonmoney's page design does have images. But it also has text. I'm a big proponent of text as well as images because of the accessibility that it offers. For users who may not navigate via images, or may access the site sans images, or other methods text is more useful. Additionally images tend to slow down the load of the main page (for users on slow connections anyways). --Tangerineduel 15:46, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

Here is my newest verison, done very roughly, combining the best bits from the others: User:Rbfskywalker/New Home2 --Rbfskywalker 18:00, January 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * It, again, separates the TV stuff from the other stuff. Even more so than in your original version. --Cartoonmoney 19:43, January 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * Just to offer yet another version, I've more completely mocked up my vision for the page here: User:CzechOut/Sandbox3. Not everything "works" on it, cause I don't really want to bother with full coding if it's going nowhere, but it gives a solid indication of the basic design I'd like to see.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍ 09:18, January 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll give your most recent version boldness CzechOut. All elements of colour and text are quite different and crisp.
 * My thoughts regarding text though still remain the same as stated above. --Tangerineduel 13:24, January 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * Bold and graphical is what this site needs, in my opinion, to attract more users. I'm by no means saying my design is the best thing since sliced bread, but the objection "it doesn't have enough text" seems entirely antithetical to common design sense. The explicit problem of the current design is that it has way, way too much text. We shouldn't and can't let our first impression be tilted towards that tiny fraction of people who interact with the internet in a non-standard way.


 * I think it's absolutely vital to remember that the front page is just a portal. It should only tease information, not overload people with reams of text. And it should be vertically "short", requiring people to press "page down" only once in most standard-sized, non-mobile browser windows.


 * Lemme ask now a series of questions that could be interpreted as sarcastically rhetorical, but that's not my intent. How many of our users would be adversely affected by a switch to a more graphically-intense experience on the front page? Doctor Who fans are, in my experience, some of the most technologically-enabled people on the planet. So how many of them don't have a computer setup that will allow them to receive pictures in a timely fashion? Are there actually enough "20th century users of the internet" out there on dialup who would be natural users of our site that this image problem need be considered? And how many differently-sighted people are actually using the site? I understand this issue is dear to your heart, but realistically, does it affect enough users to "dumb down" the very first impression people get of our wiki? It should be bold, it should be eye-catching. And it should be simple. Maybe not the exact design that I've proposed, but something at least similarly clean. Moreover, it occurs to me that my design is only slightly less "texty" than what we currently have. I specifically did take your views into consideration, in that the only completely text-less items on the page are the programme logos (which you previously said had merit) and the main banner. Otherwise, it has the same amount of text that the current incarnation does.
 * But if you really think there are going to be enough people who absolutely, positively need text, then I'd suggest we switch our mindsets towards a "two-page" design. On the graphics-rich page, we could include a link to a text-only version of the front page, and then everyone wins.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍ 17:32, January 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay.
 * Your points are taken and have made me re-evaluate how the main page should be viewed.
 * Implementation of alt-text for everything should alleviate some of my concerns and we can consider having an text only page as well.
 * Just to ask one more thing, there isn't any chance of making the images within the bank of 4 other sizes? As with the format of the current BBC novels cutting it down to a square 4:3 image doesn't really work to grab a sense of the cover (the same goes for the magazine covers). --Tangerineduel 13:18, January 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, forgot about this lil probject for a few days. Well, no, template:Portal creates, by design, equally-shaped boxes. And as you point out these are great for 4:3 stuff like BF covers, but not so great for 3:4 stuff like magazines and books. I think the best, and certainly the easist way, is to simply use logos for the 3:4-oriented stuff. So instead of a book cover, use:


 * and do the same for IDW, DWM, DWA, BIT, etc. Thing is, we're not really trying to "sell" a particular 3:4 pic on the main page. We're not actually featuring the latest issue of DWM or DWA, we're featuring the comic strips inside them. So a DWM and DWA logo makes more sense. IDW has multiple new issues a month, which we might want to combine under a single IDW logo. At any given moment, there's a "latest" SJA, TW, and DW novel from BBC Books, so it, too, is sort of a combined thing that can be represented by a logo more than an individual cover.


 * As has been mentioned before, we need to get a final idea of exactly what adventures we're going to feature on the main page, and we can then proceed to firm up the design.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍ 02:26, January 30, 2010 (UTC)

New round of discussion

 * I completely forgot about this topic (sorry) other things got in the way.
 * Logos are a good idea (there's a however coming), however the main page being a portal…will people coming to the main page know that the NSAs or whatever are published by BBC Books?
 * But if not I'm sure we can come up with a composite image for each of the series' that we're going to feature on the main page.
 * DWM's logo is pretty long (rather than compact like BBC Books' logo), is that going to be an issue with the layout?
 * Anyways...let's look at giving your main page a try. The new series is on its way, the main page can get a reboot of its own. --Tangerineduel 14:16, March 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Intending no offense to anyone, I really think using logos or other default images is a bad idea. I feel it would leave the main page far more static than it is now.
 * I also don't think it would be too big a stretch to use a scan of an opening panel of the DWM comic every month instead of using the cover of the mag itself.
 * Finally, text makes for a far larger amount of things to, well, click on. I'm incorporating some elements from CzechOut's design into mine, so we'll see how that goes. --Cartoonmoney 11:18, March 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * Also. Checking with browsershots.org, I find CzechOut's design works really badly on screens of a smaller resolution; various parts of the design overlap with each other to the point of incomprehension. . --Cartoonmoney 11:40, March 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I also have worries concerning the use of logos as navigation points (as noted above). I just thought I'd say something to try and kick start this project once more, (some projects have a tenency to stall and get forgotten about).
 * I hadn't actually considered different resolutions, though I would not that some errors (with regards to CzechOut's design) may stem from the lack of adverts in the design, on the actual main page the ads force everything into some alignment, without their presence everything may shift around. --Tangerineduel 13:31, March 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * What User:Cartoonmoney is reporting is essentially a non-issue, because it has to do with the special nature of the main page. Through not-user-modifiable coding, the main page behaves differently than a regular page, like our various sandboxes.   With our sandboxes, when you pull the width of your browser in, the right column will infinitely collapse on itself until the overlap makes it difficult to read either column.  Cartoonmoney's design will do this, too — as will anyone's that resides on a user page and uses mainpage commands — but his overall design is about 100px narrower than mine.  His therefore seems to be more solid than mine in the multi-platform browser test he showed us.  If I dropped my column width and reduced my picture sizes, I'd get an indistinguishably similar result to his.


 * However, look at how mainpages across wikia behave. Play with our current one, and the one at, say, w:c:desperatehousewives:Desperate Housewives Wiki.   If you narrow the browser on either, there's a point at which the narrowing "stops".   Indeed, if you take my design and Cartoonmoney's design and pretend to edit the actual main page, there's a point at which the two columns are prevented from further collapsing in on each other.  That's the true test of whether a design is actually workable or not.   Mine, currently, does still have about 100px of overlap between the two columns, so, again, I'd have to do a bit of fairly painless tinkering.  But it's an exaggeration to characterize the design concept as "working really badly".  It's just the difference between working in a sandbox, and working on the real page.


 * As for icons, yeah, I was coming to look at them as challenging in early February.  It wasn't necessarily the be-all, end-all of the design.  If I recall where my mind was at in early February, I'd begun to tinker with other methods of achieving the portal design, such as having square portals for CD's followed underneath by rectangular portals for books.  I, too, had begun to wonder about how the new DWM logo would possibly work, given the limited success of the BBC Books logo that I'd put up in late January.    Still, as long as this project is active, and there's a genuine desire to see the page changed, I'll give things a whirl over the weekend to get a "final" coding to my design, and we'll see where we are then.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  16:09, March 5, 2010 (UTC)