Talk:Main Page/redesign

We could probably use a more efficient front page. While the page works well as an index for those of us who are familiar with the wiki, it's not as welcoming as it could be for new users. In addition, it'd be nice to have a wiki front page that looked more like lonelygirl15 and less like Wikipedia. So jump in -- share ideas about content/features/style, etc. you'd like to see on the LGPedia front page.--JayHenry 21:55, 11 December 2006 (CST)

Awesome use of the seldom used sub-page feature of MediaWiki. I am very eager to see what ideas editors can come up with for a new main page layout -- Twjaniak 22:41, 11 December 2006 (CST)

Sorry I was gone so much lately, I've got three jobs, two kids and Christmas shopping to take care of, so I hope you'll understand if I'm not always here. (One of my coworkers asked me, "When do you sleep?!" I replied, "Um...never?") Anyway, this is a great idea for a page, and I'll leave some feedback on this stuff, which is looking pretty good.--Brucker 14:46, 12 December 2006 (CST)

The video column

My basic idea for a video column is to put the newest video at the top. That way you see the newest information first, keeps the page more dynamic. And also, to incorporate small pictures from videos (to make the front page more visual) and to include non-video, but still important events, on this list. What do people think of the basic idea?--JayHenry 23:13, 11 December 2006 (CST)

I do like it! Do you think it's going to be a lot more work to update it now though? It looks kind of advanced... OwenIsCool 23:53, 11 December 2006 (CST)

I think we can build some basic templates to make all the formatting automatic. If we do that, it should be pretty easy. If we're using a template, we can even add a quick note to explain how to add the newest video. But we'll see, if it ends up being too complicated, we can always stick with the current list.--JayHenry 00:04, 12 December 2006 (CST)

great, i was coming here to suggest that myself!--Skeeta 22:09, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Perhaps the video column should be called Latest News or something to that effect, since any new video would be news in the LG15 world. Labeling the column like this would allow us to put things there that go beyond just video, such as blurbs regarding GoodGollyItsHolly's decision. -- Twjaniak 10:10, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Yeah, good idea. I changed it and like it. I also think we should try to make the style sets look more like lonelygirl15.com, (blues and grays), and less like wikipedia, (greenish).--JayHenry 13:17, 12 December 2006 (CST)

I like the idea of having a column that has the "latest news" rather than videos. Now that the list is getting very long, I think it might be good to move it off the page. In general, I like the idea of changing things to be less text and more visuals, in general making the page a bit shorter. Keep only the latest videos and main topics on the front page, and move lesser items to index pages. --Brucker 14:46, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Personally, I think you should keep "videos" and "news" in different columns. It just adds to the confusion, and I agree with Brucker that the page should be, if not as short as possible, significantly shorter than the current main page. --Demosthenesdown 18:07, 14 December 2006 (CST)

By news we only mean -- news related to the lonelygirl15 story. Bree chat, for example, is the perfect example. Since the lonelygirl15 story is not told exclusively through videos, it's important that an event like Bree chat goes into the chronology on the Main Page. Something like a story about the lonelygirl15 production in Wired Magazine would not go on the list. That's not what we mean by news.--JayHenry 20:50, 14 December 2006 (CST)

Things become much clearer now... Thanks Jay, or Henry, or whatever...--Demosthenesdown 01:18, 15 December 2006 (CST)

Characters column

To echo your feel of the video column, how about heading the characters column with something like this. Anyone like? OwenIsCool 23:54, 11 December 2006 (CST)

Main characters
Bree	Daniel
Gemma	Jonas

See, now this is a very nice idea, but perhaps just a bit smaller. As I said before about major info staying on tha main page and more minor info going elsewhere, I think showing a small picture of every main character (bloggers only) with a link below to "supporting cast" or "other official characters" would be nice. --Brucker 14:46, 12 December 2006 (CST)

I tried adding in a modified version of the characters box. It doesn't look right at all for now, but it's an idea of what it might look like. If we don't use the box on the main page, it'd definitely be a nice touch for a characters page.--JayHenry 16:21, 13 December 2006 (CST)

That was a good try. I like it better than the current main page and better than what I made. Yeah, it might need some work (like it should be centered, prob)... but I like the direction that we're headed in, both for this col and for the videos. OwenIsCool 22:38, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Ok, so I've given more thought to the characters column (with everything that falls below it) and what should be changed going forward. Here's a little list I came up with... sorry it's so long and doesn't illustrate anything. I think we have huge potential to save valuable space if we just implement a few of these changes.

• Have a nice little table with the pics of the bloggers and links to their pages
• Other characters
  • Mention Lucy, Bree's mom and dad, P. Monkey, Owen, Thor with links to their pages.
  • Leave out Deacon (individual), Watcher, The Other Monkey, Cassie, Paul, Andrea, The Deacons (so redundant, but it's there), Gemma's flatmate. While these people certainly exist, there's too little to be said about them to really merit mention on the main page. Maybe we need a character's page with another nice looking set-up in which we can include everyone... and we can link to that. That way we can include everyone.
• Leave out Ambiguous Mystery People heading and Bukanator... it was current a long time ago, but not so relevant anymore, I don't think
• Link to article The Creators, but not to each individual profile (make sure there are links to all of them in the article)
• Production Team - also link to article and not all the individual people (we can write one if we don't have a suitable one yet)
• Link to Bree's religion, but not to individual articles for Crowley, Thelema, Denderah, The Order, the Watcher, and Bree's religion - more speculation. Again, we can make sure that the Bree's religion article is comprehensive enough and has all these links in it.
• I'm not sure what to do with the locations pages... I don't think they are too valuable to newcomers, but perhaps we can link to a central Locations page that lists all these pages so ppl can explore if they want.
• lonelygirl.com site features - very important. I would display the forums, chat room, and LGpedia links more prominently.
• Official ARG should link to just AphidPedia, no need for separate OpAphid and Tachyon links now.
• Unofficial spin-offs - link to some page that lists all the significant ones, but not list them individually... and leave cassieiswatching out altogether maybe?
• Leave related sites links to Children of Anchor Cove, YouTube and Revver
• Alternate reality games - just leave link to ARG tools?
• Music - link to ccMixter, new music page and to the (soon to be) soundtrack!

OwenIsCool 01:47, 15 December 2006 (CST)

New vid feature

Okay, so again, just an idea. Since OwenIsCool expressed some concern that a new template might be confusing... At the bottom of the page, I added a link that says "add new video." If you click on the link, it takes you directly to the video column, and even provides instructions on how to add the text. It's just a rough example of how it could work, but using templates I think we could make it pretty easy for any registered user to quickly add the newest video.--JayHenry 13:47, 12 December 2006 (CST)

I'm going to make a lot of repetitive edits to the page to add a notation system to make it easier to edit in the future. So that my edits don't interfere with the Special:recentchanges page, I'm going to make my edits as a bot. If you want to see the changes I'm making, you can always check the history of this page, or you can click on the "show bots" tab in the recent changes.--JayHenry 15:12, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Just In General

I was wondering if it is actually necessary to include ALL the information on the front page. It might be enough to link to certain catagories. Sure, listing the main characters (Bree, Gemma, Daniel, Jonas) is okay, but what about characters with very little airtime (Lucy, or the Deacon/Deacons) not to mention the space that all this stuff takes up. If you could just link to a characters portal page (or whatever it's called, my tech terms as you might be able to tell are limited) and from there jump to more specific catagories or direct characters, it would save space, and it would make the whole thing less confusing. Also the video column, to me at least, seems like a good idea, but what if you listed, with that little jpg preview (i like that) the name of the most recent video and then the description and the "author"/character. and then maybe, using only titles (like the current main page) listed the last three? there are about a million ways to do all this, but this was just my input. Of course I can't really edit things so these are all suggestions. --Demosthenesdown 21:41, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Yeah, I agree with almost every idea Demosthenes says. There's really no need to include something like Deacons (commenters) so prominently. If we could eventually pare down the page, so that very little scrolling is required to get to the bottom of it I think that'd be ideal. Of course, it will take some work to get the various portal pages up, but I think it's a good general idea for the direction we want to take this.--JayHenry 21:53, 13 December 2006 (CST)

As I said above, I think the main page should be considerably smaller. As was discussed elsewhere, I the HRWiki is an excellent example in the way they do so much. Look at their main page, and see how compact it is. I see no reason why our main page couldn't have a similar compactness. Rather than tossing up a link to every piece of information, there could be links to pages with lists of other links. We can have that little picture thing, followed by a single link to "Official Characters", a single link to "Locations", a single link to "spin-offs" or whatever. I think the main page should about one-third the size it currently is, if not more like one-quarter. --Brucker 19:09, 14 December 2006 (CST)

Yeah, single links to pages that are more specific, and not everything just dashed together on one page. --Demosthenesdown 01:20, 15 December 2006 (CST)

Featured Article

What do people think of having a featured article of the week on the main page? It's common on a lot of wikis. I personally like the idea, because it could circulate interesting pages that otherwise people might not find. What do others think?--JayHenry 23:00, 14 December 2006 (CST)

I like that a lot! I think a week is a good time period. It's a great idea and we should figure out what sort of minimum quality standards an article must meet, and who gets to decide each week. OwenIsCool 23:04, 14 December 2006 (CST)

I like it too, but as you said what are the criteria? Who decides? Theres a lot to do in order to have this idea work, certain pages would need to be cleaned up, others might need to be trimmed down. It would be a lot of work, but I think it's a cool idea, good enough to merit the work. --Demosthenesdown 01:24, 15 December 2006 (CST)

I've seen a few other wikis that do it. Basically they just discuss and vote. We could do it at the Community Portal. I think once a week is a schedule we'd be able to keep up with. We could do it batting order style. We could have the featured article on the main page. Then we have an article on deck for next week -- that everybody chips in to make really good. Then we could have a couple articles that we're considering for two weeks out.--JayHenry 02:22, 15 December 2006 (CST)

I think its a good idea to have that pipe-line like idea. It means that you can have all the work focused on just one or two articles. --Demosthenesdown 09:05, 15 December 2006 (CST)

ACTION!

Let's put some of this into use! I'm going to start with the Characters info.--Brucker 11:46, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Color scheme

Since one of the goals of the redesign project was to make the main page look less like Wikipedia and more like Lonelygirl15, I thought maybe we should give some thought to our color scheme. Right now the main page uses pastels reminiscent of Wikipedia. When we redesign it, we should try to use colors that mimic the LG15 website (much like we've used templates to mimic user's YouTube profiles. I put together a table of html colors that to me look like the ones on LG15. Feel free to add better colors as seen fit! OwenIsCool 12:27, 20 December 2006 (CST) (I removed my table since Brucker's had the official colors used on LG15 website)

Here's the actual color palette of the top of the main page:

Color scheme
Sample	HTML Color name
	background (1E5DAA)
	"A tribute to" (77C8E5)
	"15" (6FC6E3)
	Circles of dots (204C9F)
	Light blue details (2574C4)
	Faint dark blue flowers and circles (1B5FB7)
	Bright blue unicursal hex (2450AE)
	Center circle of flower (1E6BBF)
	Navigation bar (535353)
	Stars on the bar (909090)

These are eight different shades of blue and two greys, and there are no "standard" colors in there. Can anyone fix the formatting of these boxes? --Brucker 14:08, 20 December 2006 (CST)

I tried to fix it. Maybe there's a better way to do it but for now I guess this will do. I also took down my table since it takes up space and yours has the real colors anyway. OwenIsCool 14:30, 20 December 2006 (CST)

I added the hex triplets for ease of reference.--JayHenry 14:08, 21 December 2006 (CST)

I love this new color scheme around the characters box!--JayHenry 16:20, 21 December 2006 (CST)

Pictures/Staff

I think we need to find new pictures of Gemma and Jonas. For whatever reason, both of them have shorter vertical distances which makes them look slightly akward compared to Bree and Daniel. If we can't find them images that match the other two, then we need to crop the Bree and Daniel pictures so they're all the same size.

Another thing: I think we should group the Creators and Production Staff (and possibly even Bukanator)) together in one group. This would save the space it takes to divide them all into seperate catagories. Plus, there's really no need to make the distinction on the main page, is there? We can call the new catagory "LG15 Staff" or "Creators & Production Staff" - whatever works. --Andy 13:36, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Okay, I got the sizes all the same. Does anyone think that the Jonas picture still looks odd, though?--Brucker 14:25, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Thanks, looks great! It seems like the Jonas video is just a low-quality picture. Most of the pictures have been like that, though, recently. At least in my opinion. --Andy 15:52, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Okay, while I agree that the new Gemma picture is a better picture of her, the cropping is very bad. We really need consitency here. --Brucker 14:36, 21 December 2006 (CST)

Agree with Brucker, especially on the front page. We need somebody to get 4 good screenshots of Jonas, Gemma, Daniel and Bree -- crop them to the exact same size and dimensions and put them on the main page. I would do it, but I don't have the adequate software on the computer I'm at this week.--JayHenry 15:13, 21 December 2006 (CST)

I'm working on the screenshots.--Brucker 16:17, 21 December 2006 (CST)

Can you try getting a better Daniel one as well? I must admit he looks a little bit dopey the way this screenshot came out and also it cuts off the top of his head which makes it worse. 71.224.243.78 21:49, 21 December 2006 (CST)

New page is looking good

First, I love the new character box with their pictures. I would like to see that expanded to include the Creators (if they want) and I've made one for unofficial spin-offs as well. In my opinion, the Featured Articles section should be moved to the bottom. Perhaps a special "the story so far" section could get its own prominent place on the main page, while the November 28 chat hardly deserves a place on the main page. There are only the same couple of sections in there, a whole transcript will never be compied as promised. There is very little of the actual chat in there almost a month on, and I think at this point it is hardly relevant anyway. What happened happened, and I don't think it needs a main page placement. We need to think of a way to compress the main page, if we keep adding each video like this, along with the numerous sections that are on there now, it'll end up going on forever. HyeMew 15:28, 21 December 2006 (CST)

I don't want to sound rude, but I don't like the idea about the image box for the unofficial spinoffs. I just don't think that those spin-offs are important enough to take up such a big part of the main page. Technically, the unofficial spinoffs don't relate to the Breeinverse, so why should they take up a prominant part on the main page? If we include pictures for the unofficial spinoffs, we should also probably include pictures for Bree's parents, Lucy, the Watcher, Deacon, and maybe even Bree's stuffed animals. Understand what I'm saying? The unofficial spinoffs just don't seem important enough to have their pictures included on the main page. --Andy 21:48, 21 December 2006 (CST)

I see what you're saying, though one must admit cassieiswatching and NikkiB at least have both had a much bigger impact on the Breeniverse (you used the term incorrectly, the Breeniverse includes all things including unofficial) when it comes to fan talk, reaction, involvement, etc. than Lucy, Bree's Parents, or any Deacon ever did. While those three are official canon characters, if you are talking about impact that of some of the unofficial (though maybe secretly official?) spin-offs is far greater. (Also, if you are still going to list important spin-offs on the main page in the new one, as the format has so far suggested, why NOT use an image box as well? I think it looks spiffier and see why such a thing can't be installed for all applicatable categories). HyeMew 21:52, 21 December 2006 (CST)