The Mana World Forums

The current home page for the wiki is far from friendly. It's a big, unfocused list of links with minimal structure. I'd like something friendlier for players. I've already created a landing page for development) (still WIP, but far better than what we have) so we don't need to include any of that information on the home page. I'd like to keep the home page focused on players, and make it easy for new players to find information. An obvious link to the development landing page will be needed, but it doesn't need to take up much room.

I'm opening this up to all players. Please keep your proposals under your user page (ie mine would be User:Jaxad0127/Main_Page). Use this thread to discuss what the page should look like, post a link to your proposal, comment on others, repost a link if you change your proposal (once you're ready for others to look; include a blurb about what changed), etc. Once we get this looking good, we can evaluate the other core player pages, see what is missing, what can be redesigned, etc, to make TMW's wiki the best it can be for player reference.

Link: http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/ ... /Main_Page

My main page is based on the landing page for development. It's basically divided in four parts:

• Overview, this section is mostly for someone who has never played TMW before, and just want to check out the game to see if it's awsome or not.
• Indepth information, this section is mainly for the other players, to look up the information they need.
• Contact us, well I'm not entirely happy with the title of the section, but basically it contains stuff that doesn't fit the other sections
• Related projects, this sections contains links to other projects that are closely related to TMW.

My proposal doesn't have a link to the dev landing page, instead I prefer to link to "Joining the project" first. This is because the dev landing page is just an overview page about different dev subjects. It is useful if you are looking for some specific information. However a player interested in helping, might not know exactly what how is able to help us, he might not know how to join the project, etc. That's why a more player friendly page is needed, that explains these things.

Maybe this banner that was made for an opengameart ad can be added to the main page.

heya, just made a minimalistic sample of my idea in terms of userfriendly browsing using freemind.
even if i remembered the wiki login data, there would be no way building this.
so here the local sample.


its interactive, expandable, flexible but as well limited in some cases.
the treestructure can contain notes, comments, links, pics, different formatting etc.
the obvious advantage is > the treestructure with its expandable nodes allows direct accessing a page without climbing from link to link (which sucks).

drawbacks are:
-requires js enabled + flash
-text cant be used as a link, there is only a small red clickable arrow next to the text
-style is ... well ...
-flashwrapper is dated & experimental (the one from latest release is buggy)

just an idea, cheers

999999999 I like your way of thinking
We should avoid using flash though in my opinion. And if possible also avoid javascript. You gave me the idea to play a bit more with the design instead of using rectangles:



At the moment it's just a sketch though. just like my previous proposal it's divided in 4 parts. The logo can be smaller than in the sketch, it depends a bit on how much space there is for the links I guess. The upside of this design is that it looks much less boring, and invites the player more to browse the wiki.

The downside of this design is that it might a pain the ass to add/remove links, cause they need to be positioned correctly.

some expanding links would be nice though, as said linkclimbing is annoying, at least for me =P.
i bet most (non-text-only) js-capable browsers nowadays got a simple js on/off button. i also bet ie doesnt 0o

your sketch is a nice script free way and wouldnt be that hard to implement, positioning each link is insane =) easier way may be a table with varying margins per cell. logo can be a css positioned scrollable backgroundimage.

im glad to help if you need any.

You can use imagemaps to make links for only part of an image ... SVG might also work.

I only asked for image maps, the required extension is not yet installed.

Extension:ImageMap is now activated.

o11c wrote:Extension:ImageMap is now activated.

You see it didn't require more than an hour of your time. When you want it, you can do the job rather fast. Thanks for the wiki

Nard wrote:

o11c wrote:Extension:ImageMap is now activated.

You see it didn't require more than an hour of your time. When you want it, you can do the job rather fast. Thanks for the wiki

That's an interesting reply.

I'm going to replace the current main page with EJlol's submission sometime tomorrow, unless we have objections. We can always put a new one in place later if a better one gets created.

Jaxad0127 wrote:I'm going to replace the current main page with EJlol's submission sometime tomorrow, unless we have objections. We can always put a new one in place later if a better one gets created.

Just one thing I had in mind:
Maybe putting the link about player groups to "Informations For Players" and renaming them to "Player Groups (Guilds)" ?
Edit: erm... also "Informations (For Players)" -> "Information"

I experienced that newbies have more fun when they join a guild soon after they started, because they feel free to ask questions in the guild's chat tab and come into the game more easily ( = higher chance they stay).
Therefore the link to player groups should be found easier.

Cassy wrote:Just one thing I had in mind:
Maybe putting the link about player groups to "Informations For Players" and renaming them to "Player Groups (Guilds)" ?
Edit: erm... also "Informations (For Players)" -> "Information"

That doesn't apply to EJlol's version.

Cassy wrote:I experienced that newbies have more fun when they join a guild soon after they started, because they feel free to ask questions in the guild's chat tab and come into the game more easily ( = higher chance they stay).
Therefore the link to player groups should be found easier.

I'll add a link when I copy EJlol's version.

EDIT: done.