Forum:Temporary forums/Updating the main page & theme

I'll leave User:Bongolium500 to get the ball rolling with the suggestions I believe he has been developing, but having reached the requisite support threshold, I thought it was about time we get this thread officially started. Our main page and theming still tie themselves to an era that is now over; furthermore their general aesthetics, which have long been somewhat unpopular with the community, were selected based on agreements with BBC America, who are no longer carrying Doctor Who in the first place.

For a long time, there were diplomatic reasons we were stuck with that gold-and-purple and that monomaniacally current-Chibnall-era-focused home page, but I think it is time to returned to our more holistic roots. We used to look like this, foregrounding the transmats" which act as starting points for readers to dig into our wide catalogue of pages; on the current iteration, they have been pushed so far down that I had to go back and check they were even there as I prepared to write this page. In this year of the 60th anniversary, I can find no better time, as Bongolium's proposal stated, not only to "bring it all up to date with the current era and branding" (though we absolutely must do that much), but also to highlight more of the vast history of the DWU, on either side of the fourth wall, than just the most recent season.

This page is both a formality demanded by policy for such a big change (hence why we couldn't do this sooner), but also a genuine place for you, the community, to voice your opinions, and make your suggestions, about what we could do with this. I linked the older version merely as an example; the goal is to move forward, not backward! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 13:47, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if I'm contributing to this thread too soon, considering @Bongo hasn't voiced his proposal(s) yet, but I would like to share my attempts at changing the Main Page in my sandboxes; see /Sandbox Mainpage for my attempt at the Main Page, which while mostly contains now-outdated info, does have some good additions such as, an inter-Wiki template used by virtually all other BBC-related Wikis; and /Transmat:IW, an unfinished Iris Wildthyme (and Magrsverse content) , which could be adapted/or finished.  15:57, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I've particularly disliked the current theme since... well, since it was introduced, something that most people I've chatted about will probably now. Now, bringing back old faces seems to be trending right now and it is in this light that I propose we do exactly the same (but for far different reasons). Even though we're not a Doctor Who wiki only, we're still called Tardis Wiki, and the TARDIS is the most iconic thing from the franchise. Building our theme around it seems only natural then.


 * I found this archived version of our Eleventh Doctor page, which allows newer users to somewhat experience what the old themes looked liked (click the button to the right of "talk" to switch between light/dark themes). Obviously a lot of templates, .css and other details changed from then to now, both locally and globally - hell, we were tardis.wikia then, not tardis.fandom! - so we don't need to copy 1:1 what we used to have. But I still would appreciate leaning into that a fair bit, so I made this (very rough) mockup of what we could build towards. We can obviously incorporate other colors into the theme, to make it less monochromatic, but I'm quite fond of the blue/white duo we used to have. OncomingStorm12th ☎  16:57, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * PS: I know this my above comment isn't exactly about the main page, which is the topic of the thread, but there's no point in changing just the contents of the main page, given that the current theme is built upon the revamp made alongside BBC America. Just to be closer to the topic, I also had this mockup lying around of the main page, back then. OncomingStorm12th ☎  17:03, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I completely support changing the theme as well, it's been around five years since it was introduced, and not only have we had three new actors and a returning showrunner since then, five years is a third of this Wiki's lifetime. Contra the Marvel Database Wiki, which changes its theme everytime a new movie or television series comes out, which is every few months or so... we really ought to at least update the theme to reflect a current era or idea, even if it isn't for every new major release. 17:11, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I also support updating the Main Page. As a related note, that 2017 revision of it is comically broken for Kindle viewers and displays a massive image of the Eighth Doctor taking up a decent chunk of the screen, so reverting to that design is definitely a no-go. Pluto2 (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Absolutely. As I said, I merely pointed to it as the relic of a completely different philosophy for what the page could look like, not as in itself an example to emulate; the main operational element is the Transmats being one of the first things in sight rather than banished to the bottom. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:37, 7 January 2023 (UTC)