Latest revision as of 21:24, 14 July 2008

Author's Note

Obviously, there are some images missing, and some pages will need to be revised or created to provide entry points to new sections. This is merely an idea of what the frontpage could be, so please keep an open mind. I encourage the use of the talk page to discuss possible changes, enhancements, or removals from this page. Colors and such are, of course, subject to change.

To create the page, I obtained a list of all current wiki pages, sorted them by where I thought they would best fit, and then used what I considered to be the more important links to develop the frontpage. Some things omitted from the front page include:

Coopetition articles

They are to be linked under the Coopetition section.

Public Server archive pages

There is a link to the archive under Technical (could be moved to Development). It may also be possible to create a template so the most recent game could be linked directly from the frontpage. Keep in mind that a frontpage is usually static, and is only changed when necessary. Using templates allows the page to change without a direct edit.

Gametypes

Some of the more popular gametypes were linked, and a more... link was added to access the others.

Glossary Terms

All abbreviations and jargon should be included in an updated glossary. Articles that use these abbreviations should always link to the glossary.

GRF

The more important GRF links should be frontpaged. Any others should be accessible from the GRF article via a menu.

Junctionary

Again, the more important links are frontpaged. Others are linked via the Junctionary article.

Development Ideas

The Research Category has been linked since the list is ever-changing. Frontpage linking to specific development articles is likely not a good idea until they move from development into Advanced Concepts.

Guides

The Guides and Basic Concepts have a LOT of overlap. This overlap needs to be eliminated to reduce redundancy and make the wiki easier to navigate.

Again, I welcome any comments on this re-design.

Good setup Thraxian!

• Under game start, we cuold add a page that contains voting as well, currently how that works is unclear to everybody.
• I doubt development should be added on the frontpage, because that is a fastly changing area and if you don't maintain it properly is outdated rapidly.
• The "obtain page" could point to the auto updater from zuu and the download script from Ammler and in case of emergency as "or go here" point to Openttd.org. By letting users use these two auto downloads, we might have less questions about the revision used.
• Guides should be either a basic building concept or an advanced building concept. If we devide the guides in those two, we won't have redundancy.

--Tneo 06:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

• A link to Voting would be a great idea to include on that page. Based on the many different styles of voting there are, we should probably have a Voting page created that links to different pages explaining each voting system. The main voting page would indicate which voting styles are most common, and which ones are still under consideration. We would need to come to a community consensus of exactly how voting should occur, and, to my knowledge, we haven't reached one yet.
• Development has a section on the frontpage, but currently active research items are intentionally not listed on the page. There is a link to the category page, which contains links to all ongoing research projects. The title of that section may require a change to properly reflect the contents of that section.
• The obtaining page is an item to be developed. We should include at least one article explaining how to setup an OpenTTD installation to be compatible with the coop servers. This page is intended to include information on how to find the correct version, how to find/install the GRF pack, and any other utilities (including the autoupdater and download script) that are available. When that page is developed, we will be sure to include all necessary and pertinent information. For now, that link is a placeholder to indicate such a page is needed. Good thinking!
• The Guides and Tutorial tend to run together a lot. Players wanting to learn how to play OpenTTD should probably refer to the OpenTTD tutorials. Players wanting to learn the guidelines used in cooperative (and efficient) building would use our wiki. I would like to see the guides and tutorial sections merged, if possible, to avoid the frequent overlap they have. Perhaps have two tutorials - one for the basic builder, and one for advanced topics?

-- Thraxian 20:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Wow, what a great setup, Thraxian!

This page gives a detailed overview on the most important points. I like your idea at the gamestyle-pages of listing the most important and adding the "more..." link to the category. Of course, we need the same approach at the tutorials, because we can not list all the articles available.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty short on time as I'm currently in Berlin, including the upcoming 2 weeks. I'm looking forward of helping out on the wiki the days thereafter.

--Mucht 23:15, 29 April 2008 (Berlin) ;-)

A frontpage should be a doorway into the major areas of the wiki. Too much information, and users get overwhelemed. Too little, and users have to dig for something that should probably be readily available. We look foward to your return from Berlin. Safe travel!

-- Thraxian 20:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Great! What about the sidebar?

I really like the page. We might adjust the colors a little bit and add the css style to the templates CSS (MediaWiki:Common.css). I am also missing some icons to make this page more user-friendly =)

If we adjust the front-page we should adjust the sidebar as well. Another suggestion would be another menu which helps you to navigate through the wiki and helps you to find other places faster. Have a look at the Grf Section for an example. --Osai 16:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

• Color adjustment is definitely a need. I "borrowed" the formatting from another wiki I visit, with some minor changes. My primary focus on this example was to provide an outline. Exact formatting and coloring would need to be handled by someone who knows their way around a palette.
• I know nothing about how that sidebar works, so I haven't touched it. We would still need some minimal functionality there, but could we also include real-time information indicating server activity, like we do on the blog page? Things like a list of players on each server, age or current date of the active games, maybe even a thumbnail of a screenshot of a random area in the game (can that be automated?) would be neat. Either that, or we could remove the top-bar and replace the side-bar with a similar set of links, including search capability. I can handle content just fine, but I leave the formatting to other people :)

-- Thraxian 20:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I think, adjusting the colors and the formatting is my job. I created the skin for our wiki and blog, I know the colors and it shouldn't be to difficult. Though some suggestions for icons would be great. I am not the greatest talent in designing icons and it takes me too much time to do it.

Unluckily the sidebar is a static page and changing it would require major changes to the source code or the skin. I'll keep it in mind, but we should probably create a well-structured static page first. Imho it isn't a task with a high priority.

--Osai 10:15, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Layout Update

I did a major update of the layout to fit to the current wiki skin. I thought about using different colors for the six major areas. We could create a navigation which guides you through these areas and the colors help you to navigate. Of course we should avoid a too colorful look, that's not professional either. --Osai 21:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)