test2
I think "learn the arts of…" is not compatible with "Choose your allies…". Earlier, it was "choosing your allies", which works. We'll need to either make them all nouns or all verbs and rewrite wherever else as needed. I'm leaving it so as to not revert RtS's change in case I'm wrong…
Hello,
A suggestion about the first-page (and most pages actually), and specifically about the black-box, down below, where one can find the links to the wiki's pages on all units (+some other basic links):
Could we place them in some sort of a table, or otherwise ordered by unit-base-type?
Archer —> BM , SS , SA
Raider —> RM , TH , BB
etc, you get the idea.
Alex
Hrm, I tried it out here. It would be more work to maintain, since you'd need to remember to edit it whenever a new base class is added. And I'm not sure I like the appearance better.
For comparison, this is the original. I sort of prefer having them all in alphabetical order (as it is). I find I have to search less to find the right unit, and this should be even more true for newcomers who don't already know the structure of the classes.
By the way, these [[module ListPages ...]] things cannot be safely copied into most pages on this website, as they are incompatible with the translation system it's using. These listboxes work through some templating trickery that avoids putting the in the actual page.
EDIT: Regarding putting it into a table, there's already my favorite page...
I guess it's a question of personal taste (alphabetical vs. organized). Personally, I find this new alt-style more appealing, but I see your points. So, lets leave it as it was.
(I was wondering how this box was implemented, though I gotta read more carefully the link you sent!)
Concerning the Grid-page, I think that the portraits could be shorted a little-bit. In my monitor/resolution (1680x1050) its expanding both sideways and downwards (except when browser is full-screen), making a global inspection kinda difficult. Shortening to 80% (by 20%) would fix it, i guess, without losing too much grandeur. From what I'm getting, they're also somehow linked with each units page or something…
Yeah, the grid page is too wide, but it would be quite a bit of work to fix. The boxes for each unit are imported from their pages (and also imported to the front page's "random unit" thing), so you'd have to shrink them there or something. If you want to look into altering it, here's the underlying page and some documentation. Maybe the easiest way would be to apply some CSS trickery to shrink all the content. I'm not very adept at that, but you can see the page already has some custom CSS in the source.
You can go ahead and change the listbox. I'm fine with either, really. To change it, you'll need to go to the bottom of the "_template" for each category. So, http://bannersaga.wikidot.com/unit:_template and http://bannersaga.wikidot.com/_default:_template and maybe some others. The "_default" one applies to any page that does not have a category (name before a ":").
To experiment with stuff you're not sure you want to use, there's the scratch category. Just go to any scratch page (or the list of them), type a new name in the box and press enter to make another scratch page (automatically assigned a new number). If you use the new listbox, copy it to a non-scratch page first.
EDIT: never mind, I guess it wasn't so hard to fix the grid, thanks to stackexchange. See here. It's pretty crude. I'd rather not shrink the navigation elements (top bar, side bar)…
Thank you the valuable info (_template, scratch, etc)! Frankly, I'm not adept at all. I've rarely used markup-languages, so I'll not attempt any drastic changes, unless I'm fairly convinced they're sound. Need quite some reading first though! Perhaps I'll refrain to adding some pictures as I've been doing!
Thanks again. When/if I come down with some new "idea", I'll first try to implement it and then I'll contact you about it.
Yeah, it fits much better in mine too. The problem is the "overall shrinking", especially applied to the font-size; but I can live with it. Seeing the character's portraits in a glance was my main concern.
Hello Frank,
What would you say to a favicon to replace the standard wikidot one? I saw it is allowed through the admin options, so I had these two ideas/suggestions (both are on the 16x16 format, the only one allowed)
The first one is exactly the same one as the Steam/Game, so perhaps there will be legal issues there. The second one is a "stylized" version of the unit-attribute-banner appearing in-battle. Perhaps, with a little pro's touch, it could be improved.
Alex
Yeah, that would be great. (I take it you're talking about the thing that shows up on your browser tab, right?)
I don't know how to do it, but it sounds like you do! Either one's fine by me. You could ask Stoic if they mind using the first one, or just ask raven what he thinks they'd say; might make the site look too official, I suppose.
EDIT: I applied the change, but I read it takes time to actually appear. Lets see how it looks, and then decide on a final favicon.
PS: The icon used by the game in Steam (and on the top-left of the wikidot site too!) is a color/hue variation of this image. Perhaps, we could work out some feature of this image as the favicon, e.g. the tip of the Spear or the maiden's face in blue or something.
Hi Frank,
Concerning the favicon, I checked with Raven, he checked with Stoic, and they replied (through Raven) that we're cool to use any of those two favicons. I'm gonna try one of them and see how it looks.
The way to do it is [Admin>Site Manager>Appearance>Favicon].
Alex
Nah, I think the "official" icon is the best suited. You're seeing it alright, eh? This favicon is a little too-official, but, well, since we're ok to use it, why not…
Another idea I had was this
"alternative banners icon", actually a shrink of the respective in-game button.
Ah, that's weird. On Chrome, I still see the old icon (tricolor banner); but if I open it in Firefox (which I normally don't use), I see the new one (official icon). I guess there's some bad caching with Chrome or something.
Now that I see the new one up, … I'm still of the opinion that any of them would be fine, including the shrunk banner icon from the game. :)
Yeah, I have similar caching issues. I guess with time (or a cookie delete, refreshing, firefox reset etc) it will settle. For firefox, I sometimes use this little-plugin to change any of the bookmark-favicons.
I'm for keeping the present one, but I'm also quite fine with any other options. If you ever feel like changing them, go ahead!
Alex
PS - Your "all in one manual" idea is quite cool ;)
Hey Frank,
I was thinking that we could directly-link to the in-game tutorial videos (now available on YouTube), in some "pronounced" place in the main-page.
Tutorial (Basic) — http://youtu.be/XaXfmRGhVKI
Tutorial (Advanced) — http://youtu.be/1IwzA46RGPY
Another potentially helpful thing (but quite tedious) would be to add links in our wiki-pages to specific time-instants of those tutorial videos, e.g.
Unit Deployment (link to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaXfmRGhVKI&t=0m23s)
Movement Waypoints (link to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IwzA46RGPY&t=0m37s)
Alex
Hi Alex,
I'd prefer to keep the main part of the wiki focused on reference, not introduction/tutorial.
I've linked to those videos on the guides/advice page in the caption to the image.
While those videos do illustrate the basic mechanics and interface described on the battle and Strand pages, I think it's better to just point a beginner to the list of resources on the guides page from the start. Right now, I think that page is working pretty well. According to Google Analytics, it's just about tied with Battle and Units as the most visited page in the last 30 days (not counting the front page).
Anyway, I think the front page is already a little too crowded. Maybe the videos would make sense elsewhere on the site, but I suspect I'll probably still prefer keeping it simple.
Best,
Frank
Good morning Frank,
Yeah, I agree that
- the main-page is perhaps in need of less (not more) material.
- the wiki should focus on reference, not "teaching" or "promoting" the game
Personally, I don't like/use video tutorials, but I guess there's a lot of people who find them useful. What I was saying is that the actual links to youtube-videos (everybody uses that!) could have their own place "section" in the guides page, i.e. not via the forum-guides (even though they are embedded there).
Concerning the visits on the guides-page, I think that a major factor is that it is the second-item (after main!) on the ever-present navigation-menu on the left. Which brings me to another issue I'd like raise: The Units/Factions/Tactics listboxes (bottom of pages) are not present in all pages; so, if I wanna jump from Tactics into the Warhawk page, I'd have to go back to the main page etc. At the beginning it was also a bit frustrating, e.g. I found myself wondering "where did I see this Battle page?". So, I was thinking that either of these solutions could help:
- placing these lists as drop-down/collapsible (?) sub-menus on the navigation-menu on the left.
- placing [on the navigation-menu on the left] link(s) to new-page(s) where these items appear in list(s) .
- placing the listboxes on all-page templates.
What do you think? (Sorry for the text-wall!)
Alex
Oh yeah, the left sidebar probably was the draw; didn't think of that.
Yeah, what you propose with the listboxes sounds worth doing. Go ahead with whichever you choose.
If you want to put them on each page you'll have to use the templates, mostly this one, I think. Feel free to adjust the tags on any pages to make it work.
For collapsible menus in the side bar, the trick is in this part of the docs. I've put one there now.
What tha hell? Spam attacking TBS unofficial wiki? We just revert this to the previous edition, right?
—Alex
Heh. I used the admin page to ban that user (it's under Members).
I've seen the old Wikidot hands complaining about a different kind of spam the service is faced with: spam sites that bots create because the service and hosting are free. That must be an annoying problem to have.
—Frank
Yeah, it can surely be annoying, if it gets frequent and/or persistent. But, on the bright side, it might mean that the site is getting visibility and so it attracted the spammers/bots! I've registered to the gamepedia wiki too, which seems to be getting many more attacks, average 1 per day, I'd say.
—Alex
As far as visits to the site go, they've fallen from 50-100/day in March through May to 10-20/day now. Currently, the wikia still tops search results…
Yeah, whenever I look at the gamepedia's recent changes, it's 90% spam/10% you. :)
Gamepedia — Actually its just me there, after Gud set-up the site. I've ran through most of the pages and corrected/added small bits here and there. But, for the portions that were not initially created or that need big changes/additions, I didn't try to do anything. Gud said he'd try "merging" the content from here to there; when, I do not know. Only on one occasion, where I had a browser/site related issue, did this GameWidow come up with a solution (it was some font-link-colors) — http://bannersaga.gamepedia.com/Talk:Main_Page . Nowadays, I just drop in to update the tourney champ, as I do in wikidot :)
See you!