Talk:Main Page

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Redesign

The current Main Page is still optimized for Wikia. If we redesign, I suggest we:

• keep the deep links to monsters, items, etc. that make the page useful for experienced players and search engine optimization,
• keep it visually similar to the old one (brand identity),
• add a box aimed at people stumbling into the wiki that explains what Nethack actually is, and points them to a good place to get started. --Tjr 21:12, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Good ideas there. I'm not sure our current main page has much of an identity, though: the generic pastel box design is pretty common across Wikia and Wikimedia wikis (I think it goes back to an old Wikipedia main page design), and our isn't even a particularly nice-looking one. About the only really distinctive elements on our current main page are the greeting and the monster box. I do think we should keep both of those. Other ideas:

• Regularly updating content is good, it keeps readers interested and entices them to look deeper. Besides the featured article, we could have a DYK-style rolling list of trivia. Could also consider something like a "monster of the day" box etc..
• We have a huge number of links on our main page now. Many of them do serve as handy shortcuts, but some are simply useless clutter. Some even lead to outdated information, making them worse than useless. We even still have some redlinks in the monster box (though I'm working on those). Go through each link and decide which ones to keep and which to toss.
• Images. I realize NetHack is mainly a text-based game, but still, images are important. There's a reason Wikipedia's main page always has an image in each of the main sections.
• Related to the above, I'd suggest incorporating {{Moon phase}} into the design. It's kind of a silly gimmick, but it provides eye candy and a sense of timeliness.

--Ilmari Karonen 23:12, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Images: Many things can be best explained with graphs. Prime example: the web of possible alchemy recipes. Somebody needs to create such graphs.

I believe the main page should continue to double as site map in order to be search-engine friendly.

Regularily updating content is a good idea SEO-wise.

Moon phase: If it fits onto the same pages as all those links and a newbie-friendly explanation what NetHack is, all the better.

Timeline: In 1-2 weeks, Sannse will take down the notice we moved out. Then I'll have to buy Google ads. It would be good to have the new Main Page in place. --Tjr 00:16, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that having our main page serve as a site map is both user and search engine friendly. I do think most of the links to actual content pages are fine, even if I'm sure some improvements would be possible. It's the community links in the right column that I'm more concerned about (and part of the problem is that much of that part of the wiki seems neglected in general). We should try to reorganize those to offer actual useful ways for users to help, communicate and learn about the community, instead of random links to dead-end pages nobody reads or edits. --Ilmari Karonen 01:18, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I think there's way too much stuff on the front page. We could remove the Meta, Community and Wiki -boxes (possibly moving one or two most useful links in them into the sidebar and move the rest to their own pages, or link to those pages from the sidebar). That would add some space for the moon phase, at least. Some new css styles for the page would be nice too (rounded corners, better colors, mousehover, ...) --paxed 07:11, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, excellent suggestions. Tjr 14:38, 15 November 2010 (UTC)