Rising talk:Main Page

How to translate main page?

Dear translators, these are instructions how to translate the main page portal. Main page consist from several pages situated on the portal namespace. Your job is to do next:

1. Translate next pages to your language:
   1. Portal:Main Page/Intro
   2. Portal:Main Page/Welcome to the eRepublik Official Wiki
   3. Portal:Main Page/Readers
   4. Portal:Main Page/Game Concepts
   5. Portal:Main Page/Tree structure
   6. Portal:Main Page/Playing the Game
2. When you translate everything than create new page Main Page/Your language and copy data from Portal:Main Page into it and change next links so that they are:
   1. Portal:Main Page/Intro/Your language
   2. Portal:Main Page/Welcome to the eRepublik Official Wiki/Your language
   3. Portal:Main Page/Readers/Your language
   4. Portal:Main Page/Game Concepts/Your language
   5. Portal:Main Page/Tree structure/Your language
   6. Portal:Main Page/Playing the Game/Your language
3. You will probably notice that there are some pages like News and eRepublik:To-do_list which I do not recommend to be translated. Especially To-do list which is a guide for editors what is ourtop priority. I hope that this guide was helpful, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask. --AndyCro Click here to talk with me baby! ;) 09:55, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Complete reform

Am I the only one who wants this page to be completely remade? For me it's big, clumpsy, messy, confusing. I think it needs more color and more information. Wikipedias first page is a very good page. Discuss. :)--Aryamehr talk 21:45, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

+1 But how? What should we add/delete? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Khebit (talk • contribs) 18:25, April 9, 2011

Sandbox version done: http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/User:Belea2008/Sandbox - thoughts? --Belea2008 19:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I wrote in your talk, not sure if you like it not (you can delete it). But it looks good for a start, in my opinion it needs more improvement. Some thoughts:

"Welcome to Erepublik encyclopedia" - Very good, perhaps a nice background for it, maybe a nice icon behind it, erepublik logo? Perhaps some more nice statistics.

Good colors, although I am a fan of more colors. (That match, of course).

Picture of the day- too big, too ugly in my opinion. Otherwise even that is a good idea that we should keep!

What else can be add:

Random articles that have shown a high quality, not sure if that's what you mean by historical

Something like "Did you know that..." then for example: "Iran was the first country with a different governmental system that all other countries" (as an example)

We have a "For readers" today - perhaps it can be changed with "About Erepublik Wiki" with general information like this? Even there perhaps we can have the link to "For editors"?

Main topics could be added a horizontal list along with icons ex: "(Military icon) Military (Rules Icon) Rules"

Perhaps even something similiar can be done for like Game concepts? Smaller size, smaller icons, but even this as a horizontal (and of course, vertical once it becomes too long) --Aryamehr talk 19:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems my intentions regarding the organizations of the page were not clear enough: I consider that the current main page contains TOO MUCH information and sections; thus I would shrink it to ONLY 3 sections (+ optional, picture of the day) - nothing more, nothing less - I consider the 3 sections I proposed to be clear enough:

• one section for the biggest and most important current event - that being VV5;
• one section for the historical article - guide visitors to an interesting article from the history of the New World;
• one section for "latest events" - what is happening in game in the last hours (if this section could be updated automatically it would be perfect).

Long story short, I disagree with all your suggestions (because each one of them would add more information to the page) - more information does not equal a better main page. Thoughts? :D --Belea2008 19:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Random articles that have shown high quaility, this one I think is important - but I think this could be like historical, no biggie.

Did you know I think should be added. It is interesting ;)

For readers - don't care. Main topics - don't care. Game concepts - definitely don't care. In fact I find them kinda useless and only suggested them because I thought since they been part of wiki for a so long time maybe you guys want them there.

Otherwise I agree with you that it should not be filled with lots of information.

More information does not directly mean bad, it could be useful and interesting to see that when you first get on the wiki. --Aryamehr talk 19:49, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Here some thoughts:

1. I don't like that we copy the wikipedia main page style to wiki. This is eRepublik Wiki - not wikipedia.
2. I don't like that you completely left out the gameplay information from main page. Many users come to this wiki in order to get some information about game features. As the search sucks (you can't find anything with it unless you happen to type the same title the page you're looking for) it's important to put a section about gameplay too with links to main topics.
3. Automatically updated latest events: this is a job for your dev team. You're the one who have servers to cron the update once in a while. And if you want some of us to make it automated, you would have to ban that person for not respecting ToS (You agree that you shall not use any automated device to retrieve any portion of the Website and/or the eRepublik.com Service).

That's what I can think of now. -- sampo555 | Talk 20:21, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

1. What does it matter? A design is a design. If someone can make a nicer one, why not. But it does not matter. We are not fully copying it.
2. Agree, why I suggested horizontel list idea of game topics or so.
3. Agree.

--Aryamehr talk 20:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd for putting: News - ongoing events - game changes (new missions, no donations and that stuff) on the top. In the middle of the page, information about the wiki, about some topics (military, politics) and links to help. At the bottom, some random articles/pictures/citizens.

About design, I don't really care. We could use the wikipedia one until someone develops a better one. ||||||Khebit ^T_C| 10:19, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

"Many users come to this wiki in order to get some information about game features." - Interesting presumption, but it not accurate. From 100.000+ unique visitors in the last 30 days, only 0.13% come to read about game mechanics or game features - this category and all subcategories have been taken under consideration: http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Category:Playing_the_Game - and only 7 (seven) of those visitors used the main page in order to start looking for a game mechanics or game feature topic. I think we can safely assume that the Wiki is not used as a "game help platform" anymore. --Belea2008 10:53, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

From my experiences with communities, it's because they see the game info unreliable, outdated or just hard to find :S - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 11:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Or not in their language. Anyway, some "help stuff" would be good in my opinion. ||||||Khebit ^T_C| 11:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Why I would never use them:

1) Confusing. Too much to click on. Where does one begin? There are a hundred links there "Play the game category, game concepts, main topics" etc. Most important reason.

2) First page is crap (no offense to whoever constructed it, it was good in the beginning but it didn't improve). It's big, messy, not "friendly". It needs to "bring players to it" which it does not do at the moment.

3) Hard to find as John F Baker said - but I would also connect this point to point 1.

4) Outdated and unreliable. Personally, I have this "feeling" that a lot of information on the wiki is unreliable and outdated. This is because the game makes a lot of changes, reverts, rollbacks etc so it's hard to keep track (most important reason). And that many pages are outdated and unreliable.

5) There is no good "overall information" to everything so people can easily find - instead, we should keep main page minimal, focus on a page like this and link to it through main page somehow. But note this does not mean, like Belea is trying to say, that automatically more information means bad.

Aryamehr talk 11:45, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd say the best general layout would be something like this: - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 12:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Any progress, any news? On a side note, I believe "For Readers" section regarding "Neutral and factual information, there should be added a sentence with "exception for biased religious pages" --Aryamehr talk 14:17, 17 May 2011 (PDT)

Some stuff...

I made something in my sandbox. It's the same style as Beleas but it also has some (a lot of) game information in it. -- sampo555 | Talk 11:30, 14 June 2011 (PDT)

Yeah I saw that and I was like "LOLOMFG THAT'S PRETTY FUCKIN IMPRESSIVELY AWSUM!!!". Giving a +1, ofc ||||||Khebit ^T_C| 12:16, 14 June 2011 (PDT)

+1 I got the exact same reaction as Khebit, its looks wicked. With the Latest events section, can we get that to come from the API so it updates itself? It would be interesting. -- Mikhail Alexander 14:28, 14 June 2011 (PDT)

Latest events are already updated every hour if I'm around. -- sampo555 | Talk 22:48, 14 June 2011 (PDT)

That's mighty funky, Sampo. Only thing I could suggest is changing the rounded box things to the style of our infobox templates. • John F. Baker (Talk | Contribs) • 19:26, 14 June 2011 (PDT)

Well, I ain't any style guru so feel free to suggest and fix stuff :D. -- sampo555 | Talk 22:48, 14 June 2011 (PDT)

Just tweaked it a titchy bit. Also, could we possibly keep the "chosen picture" thing, or do you think that would clutter the page now? • John F. Baker (Talk | Contribs) • 03:39, 15 June 2011 (PDT)

It looks better now o/. OFC it's possible to add more sections. But I don't really see the point of showing different flag balls at the homepage. If we really find some good images to show there, maybe we should add them. -- sampo555 | Talk 03:54, 15 June 2011 (PDT)

Very awesome. I like it. Some things:

1. So much blue. Can we not have other colors taht match to blue instead?
2. Possible to have more space between "Current Event" and "historial article"?
3. For Readers should be chaned, "About the wiki" maybe, because when you click More you get info that editors can get too.
4. I say we skip pic of the day.
5. Just need some text to be fixed, ex. "Would you like to know? What's a resistance war?" Should be "what a resistance war is" etc.

Well done, looks very good.--Aryamehr talk 06:15, 15 June 2011 (PDT)

1. Dunno. I'm not very artistic person so don't ask me :D.

2. Yes.

3. Changed.

5. It might be better if I leave that to our native English speakers ;) -- sampo555 | Talk 07:01, 15 June 2011 (PDT)

Very awesome work, well done mate. Agree with 5. And if other colors could be used too it would awesome. Well done once again. --Aryamehr talk 14:32, 15 June 2011 (PDT)

Something like this, Aryamehr? (Check the page) • John F. Baker (Talk | Contribs) • 17:06, 17 June 2011 (PDT)

I don't like it as the boxes are all different size and it breaks the flow of the page. Also those color are way too flashy compared to other things in the page in in eRepublik in overall. Actually it's pretty ugly with the blue borders and it doesn't fit to the page at all. I think that the page should have only light colors. -- sampo555 | Talk 01:02, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

I like the colours that sampi had. Its nice, its calm and its soft colours. Please revert it back and install the new page :) -- Mikhail Alexander 03:23, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

Don't install it yet ;) I still got some things to do before it can be made live (like archive the current version properly and make the new one easily translatable). -- sampo555 | Talk 05:14, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

I made some changes to it. I added some colors but not so flashy as Jan ;). Also I modified the boxes a bit (now they are aligned). -- sampo555 | Talk 05:33, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

 :P It looks better now. • John F. Baker (Talk | Contribs) • 08:22, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

Just a thought, can we try to emulate the new "country status" header that is now in the game? It would be a good way to do the "in the news" section (called "Latest events" in your mock-up). We could call it "Global Status" and maybe try to give it the same in-game look. One other thing, the game bar/menu on my screen always extends out of the frame. Guess my monitor settings are at the wrong ratio, but I imagine I'm not the only one. Anyway to constrain that to fit user monitor settings? I also think we should consider moving at least one "non-help" section up to the top, so it doesn't just appear that the wiki is solely a help manual. Both elements are important imo, so its hard to pick which to put up top, but if we go with the "Global Status" idea it might stand out enough to just move that one content section upwards. Perhaps top right? -- Citizen 6 _Talk   03:46, 20 June 2011 (PDT)

1. Emulate new country status header - We could but I don't think it would fit here as it takes a lot of space and would only give us a place for 3 entries (4 at most if we make the line-height smaller). I don't support this.
2. Game menu extends out of frame - There's no easy way to solve this problem. A solution would be to add "min-width" CSS-declaration for #content div (the box with the white background starting from "Page - Discussion, edit, history etc. menu menu). But I honestly don't have any idea how that will effect others experience in this wiki (we can add it only to the page it's needed but still). Basically this means more vertical scrolling for people with vertical resolution less than ~1200px (Dunno the exact number but it's 1000px + width of the sidebar). And it would also break the control panel found from the top of the page (if you use very low resolution). Check the page.
3. "non-help" section up to the top - We could make one section from "Selected current events" and "Selected historical article" and add it above "military-economy" box. Then at the end we could make a section with Latest events (auto update) and news (like the current news section). Or this same the other way around. -- sampo555 | Talk 08:09, 20 June 2011 (PDT)

Very well done guys. It looks awesome right now. I have nothing else to add. John: That was awesome haha, but too flashy. Well done.--Aryamehr talk 14:24, 20 June 2011 (PDT)

1. Emulate new country status header - I was actually thinking of making the header of the NEWS (or Latest Events) section just kinda look like it, not a full formatting of the section. Basically replacing the L-Blue header with the same header (though smaller) seen in the game Country Status by way of an image. No spiral book or folding map, or even the entries themselves being anything other than wiki format. It would still otherwise be the same except for an image in the header.
2. Game menu extends out of frame - Then I say it should be removed entirely, at least from the main page, it looks tacky on some screens. -- Citizen 6 _Talk   10:16, 21 June 2011 (PDT)

I made a fix attempt to it. Check it out and tell us what you see (does it work or did I even understood your problem): User:Sampo555/Sandbox (you may need to clear your cache)? I tried it with lower resolution and now the menu stays in the box (if this is the problem). And for 1. I still don't quite know what you mean (like this or ?). -- sampo555 | Talk 10:21, 21 June 2011 (PDT)

I think that made it worse, because now all the right-side sections are forcing a scroll to read the content. Before I believe it was just the menu-bar. I suppose I could be the only one experiencing this, but who knows. I'm set at 1024x768 (its a crap monitor and I can't support a wider format on this one). As for the Latest events image ... bingo! Maybe tack on a mock radar or globe. It might not fit with the rest, but even without it will have the same effect. Just an idea to provide more familiarity for gamers. -- Citizen 6 _Talk   00:25, 22 June 2011 (PDT)

All right. Let's try another solution. I removed the "Wars" menu completely from the menu in order to reduce the width of it. As it links to Wars (this could be added to the Community menu maybe (?)) it doesn't really give any extra information to the homepage (as all relevant war articles are covered in the Military section). I would really like to have the menu on the main page as it's easy way to give a lot of links to citizens with familiar user interface. I tried this with my monitor set to 1024x768 and it worked well without any need for scrolling. For the latest events header, I'll see what I can do. -- sampo555 | Talk 01:30, 22 June 2011 (PDT)

Disco! that worked. You could just as easily dump the gold section, but I really have no preference. -- Citizen 6 _Talk   02:15, 22 June 2011 (PDT)

If we drop the gold section (I would remove this too), there wouldn't be rounded corners and it doesn't look good. Also for the news header see User:Sampo555/Sandbox/Core (if not shown clear cache). That's the best I can do. If it doesn't work well there's nothing more I can do to fix it (we would need a better coder than me to do it). -- sampo555 | Talk 02:54, 22 June 2011 (PDT)

Can you shrink the header to a the size as the rest, or does it lose definition? Doesn't need to be that large :-) -- Citizen 6 _Talk   03:12, 22 June 2011 (PDT)

Done. -- sampo555 | Talk 04:50, 22 June 2011 (PDT)

Blue title on pink background ? (Politics and The media) , it is not looks good but i have no suggest ! use some darker color and dont make dollhouse . :D Ali Emami talk to me 04:32, 23 June 2011 (PDT)

Few small tweaks has been made:

• Each column now has it's own sub-page.
• Headers will have sub-page edit links. These are only shown when hovering over header (excluding the pages that are currently in Template ns which will be moved and links added when/if we implement this).

Now I want everyone to take a look at the page (new link) and see if there's any layout issues and report them here. It's not good to have a main page that works only for some. -- sampo555 | Talk 14:16, 22 June 2011 (PDT)