Wikipedia talk:Community portal/Redesign

This is the place for discussion of ongoing tasks in this project, which include:

1. Develop the structure, decide what content to include on the Community Portal, and how.
2. Decide on the design aesthetics/style for the page. --Aude (talk | contribs) 21:48, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Community Portal content

Community Bulletin Board

The CBB needs to be more compact, and get rid of the white space there now. I see a few options:

1. Get rid of the "Signpost" box, and move the new WikiProjects and Portals there.
2. Move the WikiProjects and Portals to a different section of the Community Portal, separate from the CBB.
3. On the current Community Portal, there's a section for "New Featured Content". We could move that to the top, right column and put the CBB in the top left column. These two sections could complement each other nicely.

Any thoughts regarding these options, or other suggestions on making the CBB more compact and concise? --Aude (talk | contribs) 01:58, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

3. - copied from above - maybe we could be fixing up the Wikipedia:Featured content portal, so we can convince the-powers-that-be to link that in the navigation-sidebar box, instead of the "Featured articles" link that got added this week. --Quiddity 04:58, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

1 + 2. - Yeah. But move the CBB to occupy the top right column. (I really think "Jobs to do" should remain at the top of the page. They would also complement each other, and the CBB would be above the Collaborations.) (The "News" section should also be above the "jobs to do", it got cut out accidentally when the CBB was moved up in the last edit.) --Quiddity 05:11, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

What design style to use?

What style should we use for the community portal?

• Main Page style? - Wikipedia:Community Portal/Draft1b - or a mixture User:Kmf164/Workshop (work in progress, idea is to combine best elements of various other drafts)
• Distinct from main page style - Wikipedia:Community Portal/Draft1a
• Style, such as used on commons:Community portal. - eg Wikipedia:Community Portal/Draft1c

Before we get further down the road of having forked drafts, lets decide on which course to take. --Aude (talk | contribs) 14:57, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Alternatively, are there some elements of each of these three options that you like? that we could combine into one draft? --Aude (talk | contribs) 15:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I know that Go for it! would like a vote immediately. But, this needs to be a discussion first of the pros and cons of each, which design elements of each we want to incorporate in the single draft, etc. I also think it's essential that we discuss what content to include. --Aude (talk | contribs) 16:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I like the Commons style. Distinctive yet complimentary to the Main Page. 2 columns throughout makes for good usability. --Quiddity 22:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Color

These are the only 2 useful colour links i've found so far:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Usability/Color (which should be expanded with suggested schemes that all work together, picked by someone with a design/art/web-usability comprehension of colour theories)
• the table at the bottom of this thread.

Is there anything else official to guide us on colour suggestions? (a meta meta stylesbook?) --Quiddity 03:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I updated the colour selection at the first link. (code is horrible, working on colours first though, then cleanup). more suggestions? --Quiddity 02:16, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I like the color scheme at commons:Help:Contents as pointed out by the first link. Somewhat like the Main Page, but different colors and no lighter color above the header make a good enough distinction between the pages.--HereToHelp 02:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, i like that layout a lot too, the problem is it's in a table, and i don't know how to translate it into divs efficiently. Can anyone help with that? Create a template I/We can copy and paste new colours combos into? --Quiddity 03:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Aha! Wikipedia:Colours. There we are. and Wikipedia:Infobox colours, I'll add a note on Wikipedia:WikiProject Color seeking input. --Quiddity 05:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

There's even a Wikipedia:WikiProject_Usability. Looks like it's worth reading / contacting. Kosebamse 06:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

That was my first link in the thread ;-)

Grmbl. Kosebamse 08:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

And i think they're mostly here already. Many of the Main Page redesign people migrated here.--Quiddity 07:12, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Were there any opponents to changing the draft b colour scheme to match the commons:Help:Contents colours? --Quiddity 22:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I would be fine with trying that. Being that these are drafts, we can try anything. --Aude (talk | contribs) 01:12, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Main page style

Header box

problem(s) with the header box:

• The within-page links in the top right, are actual page-links in the Main Page's header box. That is confusingly inconsistent.

I suggest we try making the title box 50% width, and leave a normal ToC floating in the top right. (as on the current CP) --Quiddity 05:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The title box looks good with a 300px width. Then if we have 2 columns of content, it would be good to have 2 matching columns of intra-links (as on the help:contents/sitemap). I can't manage to code a box that floats top-right though. --Quiddity 09:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

eg

Contents:
-News    -CBB
-Jobs    -Collaborations
-Editing -Deletion

Indexing WP namespace

Yesterday and today, I have made some progress with indexing Wikipedia (probably will do Help namespace too) pages at User:Kmf164/Index. This helps get a sense of what's out there and think about how to organize it, and help inform decisions as to what to include in the Community Portal structure. Much of these topics belong on the Help pages, some might belong in the new "Featured articles" page now linked in the navigation bar, others might go in Wikipedia:About, etc. --Aude (talk | contribs) 21:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Good job. We still don't have a section under departments with administrative links. --Go for it! 18:24, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Poll results

After 39 support votes were accumulated (versus 12 and 2, respectively for the other drafts), the Community Portal was restored to the developed version.

Color issue - has been moved to the Community Portal talk page

Wikipedia talk:Community Portal#Moving on - we need a color poll

Wikipedia Signpost

Can you possibly make the signpost easier to find on the community page? The new changes meant I knew it was there somewhere but it took me a while to locate it.Sabine's Sunbird talk 16:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Responded on Wikipedia talk:Community Portal. --Aude (talk | contribs) 16:50, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Related wiki communities

Why not move related communities in a box under "toolbar" on the side page frame? it will save space. –Tutmøsis · (Msg Me) 01:24, 14 April 2006 (UTC)