Talk:Main Page
Quick nitty gritty gribbly grabbly notes:
- Template navigation toolbars for subsections.
- Strategy by terrain notes?
- Mention of bug where unit gets stuck in the corner of the map
- Mention of bug where you reload a battlescape mission only to be on an invalid level and how to recover from it (use OHMap, go back down to legal level, click until you find the map again, save the game). Often happens after editting the game, strangely enough. Is it possible the game stores map camera coordinates as a file checksum or somesuch?
- Blast! I must really remember to write my thoughts down here as often as possible. I've had many floaty lightbulb moments on what we're currently lacking/missing, and they're all gone.
- - NKF
Site Backups
Ok, gents. Here's the scoop - straight from GazChap. The site is backed up every day, so there is basically no worry about losing everything if it should go down. The only thing that may be lost are transactions during that day when it is down. Normally there isn't much activity, but there is the occasional marathon editing session which some people partake in. ;)--Zombie 19:41, 9 June 2006 (PDT)
The server hosting the UFOpaedia experienced a few issues over the weekend, but nothing major. However, I've decided that being reliant on a third-party backup service is foolhardy - consequently I'm going to be installing my own backup solution to the server soon (hopefully within the next few days) that will backup all user-submitted data. If anyone would like to volunteer to receive additional backups via e-mail (no point me just having backups, if I get knocked down by a bus we'd be stuffed ;) ) then please contact me at gazchap at gmail dot com. --GazChap 13:48, 31 July 2006 (BST)
Main Page design
The Main Page redesign has now been implemented; see User talk:Ethereal Cereal for the archived discussion.
Does anyone know if we can adjust those main navigation links (upper left of each page) so that we can add a link to the UFO2k Main Page? I think that would be appreciated by them. But I have no idea where that's accessed... maybe the managers have special areas?
As long as anyone's editing that, it could be cleaned up a little... do we really need e.g. Current Events, and Donations? Although maybe GazChap likes that last one, hehe.
---MikeTheRed 07:14, 9 June 2006 (PDT)
Sorry for the delay on this subject, but I finally figured out how to edit the navigation menu. I removed the current events, random and donation page links from the navigation menu. Also added a link to the UFO2000 subwiki. Eventually, I'd like to have sub-"main pages" for EU, TFTD and Apoc which would clean up the main page even more. Just a proposal at the moment. Discuss please. --Zombie 19:08, 5 October 2006 (PDT)
Cool, Z! Thanks for doing that. UFO2k always needed its own link. FWIW, my vote would be to make it #2 in the sidebar. Or even #1 if you take out the EU Main Page link, since the Main Page is accessible by hitting the X-COM graphic. It's just a thought though; it's already a big improvement. By chance, did you ask GazChap if it's ok to take out Donations? I have no idea if he ever got any, but I'd let him make that call. As for sub-Main Pages for the major games, I can see them maybe wanting their own page, or maybe wanting to stay together with the very deeply researched EU info. Since I personally haven't resurrected anything but EU, I have no opinion and will leave that up to others.
I'm sure the U2k folks thank you for taking the time to figure out how to edit the sidebar link, and I do too! --MikeTheRed
I'd like to keep the main page link in place as it is a handy tool to get to the root of the site. Sure the logo is itself a link too, but newbies might not realize this. The navigation sidebar was discussed with Mr Chap way back in February, and he basically said that money is not an issue and he would remove the donations as well as the current events links as soon as he figured out how. I assumed this was as much permission as I needed to do it myself. ;)
As for the ordering of the navigation sidebar, I temporarily put the UFO2000 game in there. My intention is to create another sidebar underneath navigation entitled "games" and put all the X-COM and fan-created games in there (including UFO2000). This would facilitate the creation of a few new game sub-main pages which would contain the specific game navigation table from the main page. A couple of these pages already exist but are being under-utilized (X-COM and TFTD for instance}. Now, I'm not saying we remove the game navigation tables on the main page - but just to copy that info across. With those game navigation links in the sidebar it becomes really easy to jump between titles without stopping at the main page. Does this make sense? --Zombie 18:04, 6 October 2006 (PDT)
Anything's good that's good for the users, and this sounds good for the users. Is there any way to put a graphic in for U2k? In the upper left. That would be very cool. They are an entirely nother vigorous community operating under GazChap's benevolence. Thanks for having checked with him already - I should have known you already would have. I for one think that a big XCOM logo means the EU Main Page, so a link isn't needed. But as usual it's a minor issue, and wiki editing falls to those taking decisive and reasonable actions. I'm not so sure what you mean by all the navigation. Ethereal Cereal did a really good re-write of the Main Page which I resisted at first, but enjoyed once I saw it. ---MikeTheRed 22:10, 6 October 2006 (PDT)
I'm not sure if sysops have permission to add/change/modify the main logo. I will of course check. As for the navigation, why don't I just draw up something so you can see what I mean? It's not that big of a deal to change stuff back if you guys don't like it. ;)--Zombie 22:17, 6 October 2006 (PDT)
Sounds good. As for logos, if there's a way to put the U2k one under the EU one in the upper left, that'd be superb. ---MikeTheRed 23:10, 6 October 2006 (PDT)
How did you remove the links from the menu on the left? Still don't know how to do it myself, I'm guessing it's not in the main templates if you had access to it!
Also, if the logo needs to be changed at any point then send me the file and I'll replace it straight away, along with the link (if required)
-- GazChap 16:35 BST, 9th October 2006.
The side navigation menu is located in MediaWiki:Sidebar and it's protected from edits except for sysops and up. I think most (if not all) of the MediWiki pages are protected in this manner to prevent members from doing some major damage. ;)
I don't have access to change/update the logo and/or link. From what I can determine, it's in LocalSettings.php which is out of my jurisdiction. Instead of tacking on another logo, I heard it is possible to have 2 different wikis running off the same software and server. (It was an academic institution "giving" students the opportunity to create their own wikis using the same software). This would probably be a better choice for us as each wiki can have a different logo, menu, skin, etc. Don't ask me how to do this though. Before anything is done we should probably ask the UFO2000 folks what they want. ;) - Zombie 15:00, 9 October 2006 (PDT)
Ok, check it out guys. I did some minor work on adding a games menu to the sidebar for quick navigation. This way if you are in an EU section and want to switch to TFTD without stopping at the main page first, you just click on the link on the sidebar and bingo!, there you go right to the game. And since the main page was getting a little long, this menu also cuts down on the amount of scrolling you need to do to get to a game section. Me thinks this setup is more functional and also user-friendly. It also consolidates all the games into one area (we can add the other titles as more information is added). - Zombie 20:00, 13 October 2006 (PDT)
- Z, does that mean folks need to edit two pages if they edit their game's main page? (the wiki main page, and their game's main page) --MikeTheRed 12:59, 14 October 2006 (PDT)
Just noticed the buttons. Thumbs up! :) Hobbes 13:05, 14 October 2006 (PDT)
Thanks for the vote of approval, Hobbes! If you need anything else just give me a jingle. ;)
MTR: Unfortunately, yes. If you edit the main page tables you must update the corresponding game page table too (at least for now). I'm not sure if there is a way to create one table so that you can include it anywhere and the changes will update. Transclusion might work, but NKF's the expert on that subject though. - Zombie 20:55, 14 October 2006 (PDT)
Transclusion will certainly work. It does mean that editing the table will be less than direct, but it will make updating multiple pages with the tables a very simple process.
By just separating the table, the main pages can also focus on other things as well.
We may want to create a central page with a lookup of all the transclusion pages that we make though, for both easy editing access and as a refresher.
- NKF
I myself am only working on EU, and like the simplicity of having everything on one main page. I was simply hoping we could get UFO2k in the nav bar, hehe. But either way works. Breaking it out would be good wiki experience for learning about transclusions. ---MikeTheRed 22:59, 14 October 2006 (PDT)
There, I transcluded the EU, TFTD and Apoc tables to the following pages: EU_Table, TFTD_Table and Apoc_Table. That part wasn't too hard, but getting the transcluded table to appear differently was sort of a pain due to all the width attributes. The good part about transcluding those tables is that if we want to widen them in the future due to more info added, changing the main page tables is a snap. Anyway hope I didn't mess anything up in the process. ;) --Zombie 19:18, 23 October 2006 (PDT)
Impressive work, Z! Thanks for that. --MikeTheRed 17:43, 27 October 2006 (PDT)
Wiki Tables
Z, those tables you've been making are looking good, versus the old attempts I once tried. Is it possible to have numbers in a column be right-aligned, but not flush against the right border of the cell? With a little bit of space between the number and the right border... maybe about the width of a space character. I guess that, if nothing else, it could be made with right alignment plus a "hard space"? - MikeTheRed 22:02, 11 November 2006 (PST)
Well, anything is possible. I could add a non-breaking space (  with a semicolon directly after it) which would pad the text within a cell to keep it away from the wall. Which column were you looking to right-justify?
Suppose I should have checked to see what you guys think of my work with tables around here. I'm assuming that since nobody complained yet, that everything is acceptable, no? The nice thing about templates is that we can easily change all the tables which rely on it quickly if you don't like it or want to update the look. Examples:
- Description table (for mainly text) - GEODATA, Program Files etc.
- Centered table (for data and numbers) - Talk:SOLDIER.DAT, Weapon Stats and Raw_recruit_statistical_likelihood
Basically the two types are identical except that the "data" in a description table is left justified as default and the data in a centered table is, well, centered. ;) You could create all tables with a single template, but getting everything justified properly requires more lines of HTML as you would need to add the align attribute to stuff where you want to override the defaults. (I tried using a generic table attribute declaration, and then tacking on the specific align as an afterthought but that doesn't work). For instance, tacking on the style="text-align:center;" to the opening table declaration <table {{StdDescTable}} style="text-align:center;"> does not center the data in the table. (Where the StdDescTable is the following: cellpadding="2" border="1" style="background: #E8E8E8; border:2px #696969 solid; border-collapse: collapse" Hence why I created two table types instead of just one.
Color scheme for these tables is somewhat abitrary, but sticks to the grey area of the spectrum. I started with a light grey background for the body of the table and a darker grey for the headings. The border didn't look good with the same color as the headings so I made that an even darker shade of grey. Because of the choice to use a background color other than white, I couldn't use NKF's main table/HWP templates as there wasn't enough contrast anymore.
These templates should make it fairly easy to port over my alien stat tables for EU without too many modifications. (MediaWiki unfortunately does not allow some "standard" HTML table tags such as <col>, <colgroup>, <thead> and <tbody> which I make use of in the stat tables at StrategyCore). That's why I haven't added those tables yet as trying to get them formatted properly was unsuccessful in pure HTML. So that's the scoop. - Zombie 23:11, 11 November 2006 (PST)
That particular Recruit table is fine. Occasionally, though, I like to right align a particular column, so that it stresses where large or small values are. I never could figure out how to do it, unless I put a code in every single cell of that column.
Can it be done for specific columns, within the templates you made? What I mean is, without changing your template, can a "column specific" command be put in a table that uses a table template. By column specific I mean, you only need to make the command once... not in every cell of the column of interest.
I never thought the ASCII tables were very pretty. But they got the job done. If wiki tables can handle most everything ok, it sounds good. Then again that's a fair amount of code, even if it is pretty straightforward.
Your new tables look fine, to me. It's good to see more variety and color than those plain old ASCII ones. - MikeTheRed 23:23, 11 November 2006 (PST)
Yeah, it can be done but requires you to define columns in pure MediaWiki instead of HTML (remember that the col and colgroup tags aren't allowed here, otherwise defining a column would be a piece of cake). Converting between the two is a real hassle though - hence why I prefer strict HTML and just adding the tags to each individual cell. ;)- Zombie 23:53, 11 November 2006 (PST)
It's a pity we're stuck with some limitations like this, but oh well.
On a completely unrelated note, I recalled something that I was meaning to mention.
Wrestling control of the automatically generated table of contents for each page.
Often the table of contents will be generated just fine, and you will not want to meddle with it. But if you find that it's messing with your page formatting because it's just not going where you want it, get control of it by entering __NOTOC__ at the very start of the page to disable the table of contents. Then manually insert the table of contents where you want it to go by entering __TOC__.
For example, if you wanted to shove it into a table for whatever reason:
| Pretend the borders are invisible. | |
| Something like this, I guess. | |
That should come in handy if you're having trouble with the TOC placement.
- NKF
Slight problem with transclusion tables for main page
Folks, I've noticed a problem with the main transclusion tables for the main page when I was adding a few links to the UFO table.
The problem is that the tables are classed as ordinary pages. They certainly work with transclusion the same way the template pages do, but there are two problems that they create.
The first, and most prominent, is that actual main page doesn't update when updates are made to the individual tables. You have to have your browser perform a forced refresh to get the updates to show.
The second is that the templates aren't listed at the bottom of the edit box when you edit the main page. Having them listed would make it a convenient way to get to them rather than manually type the name into the address bar.
It's not a major problem, but I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention. I'll fix this later when I get a bit of free time. I a fix would just involve moving the tables into the template namespace. If not, well, I'll do a bit of cut and paste wizardry to make everything right.
- NKF
Apologies, yep template pages do update near-automatically so they are a better choice than transcluded pages. I noticed that when you move a page that has a link on the template page and subsequently edit the template to point to the new location that the links on the moved page will not refresh. You must perform a dummy edit on the pages with the template info to update the links accordingly. I'll have to check to see what happens if you rename a template link and then move the page. The same thing might happen. It depends on the software here and if it uses dynamic pointers. --Zombie 08:52, 1 February 2007 (PST)
Update
Clean Up
It's just occurring to me that "Community" does not feature the main two actual forums (XCOMUFO and StratCore) that newbies might turn to, right up front. Also, this Discussion page has gotten way long.
Newbies need that Community connection, since that's the meaning of the word. Never mind that it can be found down around here somwhere, which even I can't find, right off. (It's why I came here, to show others examples of linking, but now I can't find where the heck the forums show up here.) Wikis should appeal to newbies heartily. Links to talk forums need to be "right there".
Could someone take a hand at making the forums highlighted for newbies. And also, such a dedicated person might cut down this Discussion page tons. The new Style page is a place to put some things.
Some thoughts - MikeTheRed 23:39, 9 February 2007 (PST)