Forum:Skin and Main Page

Forum: The Situation Room > Skin and Main Page

Hi everyone!

Now that there are some new admins around, I thought I'd post this here instead of in ProudHug's talk page.

My name is Nathan and I'm a wikia helper with the entertainment team. With the roll-out of Wikia's New Style, there's a couple of changes that'll be happening around here, and we'd like to help you guys transition into them.

The first change is moving into the Monaco Skin. We love the current look, and would like to help you set up the same look and feel in the Monaco format.

Second, the main page will be incorporating an extra ad, and will need to follow a two-column format. Here's a draft I put together from your current main page that won't break once the ads are turned on.

Here are some other examples of wikis that have switched to Monaco and/or have their main page formatted already:
World of Warcraft Wiki - Marvel Movies - Memory Alpha (Doesn't have the main page switched yet)

Would you like me to help you with customizing the skin, sidebar, and main page, or would you like to do it yourself?  :)

Thanks!

--Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 17:33, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to help us with these new changes, Nathan. I personally don't like the new look, but if it brings Wikia more money then it definitely helps us all! I have a question which betrays my ignorance and should be easy for you to answer: When I look at your development draft, I'm seeing your content, but to the right of the page I'm also seeing Wikia Spotlights and an advertisement. That column of stuff will cease to exist when the new changes are implemented, correct?

I'd love to help with this effort, but to put it simply, I'm not sufficiently competent with that kind of work. I'm a huge content contributor and my work with the meta-pages has been minimal and generally it was heavily "inspired" by other wikis. SignorSimon has added some ideas in the sandbox, and, though I happen to prefer the version you have, I suspect his input will be more useful. The News should be above the Quote box, and I added a clear-both spacer so the News no longer runs into the Wikia box at the bottom.

Lastly, if I could do something to help, it would be to make the Common metapage display our color scheme on all the skins. If the new Monaco-default could have the same color scheme as Monobook does, I'd be happy as a clam. The default colors for Monaco don't fit right on this wiki, so the closer it looks to our Monobook, the better. – Blue Rook 18:08, 16 July 2008 (UTC)_talkcontribs

I'm more than happy to hang around and help out. :)

I'm assuming that you're seeing the ads to the right of the page because you're still viewing the page in Monobook, correct? In Monaco, those ads aren't there.

I didn't even realize Simon had made an effort at creating an upgrade from my page, so I'm glad you pointed that out. I can certainly modify my draft to incorporate his changes as well as your suggestions. However, if you guys would like some more time to work on Simon's draft instead, we have a little time before the main page ads come on here.

Making the custom monaco skin look as close as possible to the monobook one was my original intention. Would you guys like me to go ahead and put that together?

Thanks for the feedback, Rook, I'll get to work on updating my main page draft. :)

--Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 18:17, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I updated both, I didn't realize Simon's was pretty much done with the exception of the quote of the day. (Which I fixed to be full-width). Can we move it to the main page and tweak it there if it needs more? :)

--Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 18:39, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any problems with moving it there, so long as you keep your promise to stick around, at least for a bit, to help us with the inevitable "move that a little to the left..." kind of thing that will come up ;)

Glad to hear that we can change Monaco to have the color scheme our old guard created here! The default Monaco is ugly, ugly, and I was really peeved earlier since I believed it was being shoved down our throats with little hope for customizing it. – Blue Rook 19:05, 16 July 2008 (UTC)_talkcontribs

I'm online all the time, and get the messages you guys leave on my talk page on every other wiki too, so I'm here to help!

I kind of forgot that I was going to wait to make a skin until Simon chimed in, and made one. It's not being used anywhere, and it fully open to modification, but here's what the main page would look like with the new layout and skin. If you want to see that skin on any other page on the wiki, just add: '?useskin=monaco&usetheme=custom' to the end of the url and it'll show up.

Sorry about not waiting. I really just forgot what I was going to do and did something else. :)

--Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 19:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there any way to preserve out current sidebar? SignorSimon 19:58, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, it looks like the sidebar we have doesn't work in the new skin. SignorSimon 20:01, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Definitely. The new sidebar is at MediaWiki:Monaco-sidebar, and here's a link that explains you how it's set up. I'll fill it out the same as you have here, and then you guys can put more or less into it if you'd like.

Any tweaks needed to the skin? I wanted to remind you guys that unless you have 'let the admin's skin override my choice' set in your preferences, you'll still see monobook if it's your preferred skin for the wiki.

--Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 20:18, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Just a minor quibble: why is it that when you click "View in Monaco" on your draft of the new page, the color scheme goes white instead of black? And one other thing, aside from the sidebar on the left of every page, the sidebar we use on character, location and episode pages (e.g. Jack Bauer - the one on the right) doesn't work with the new skin (I added that bit of text to end and it doesn't work). Thanks! SignorSimon 20:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I updated the link for monaco on my page, I forgot about that one. It should be right now.

I think I fixed the sidebar, but I couldn't see the one you're talking about on Jack's page.

Here's a screenshot of what I see.

--Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 20:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I see what you mean now, the image and such gets crammed over to the left instead of on the right. Let's see if I can fix it.

--Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 20:35, 16 July 2008 (UTC)