Talk:Main Page

New Pages list/section

In an email to the editors, a reader made what I think is an excellent suggestion.

I thought it may be a good idea if we have a sort of list like this one on the front page: New Articles
The featured pages section is nice, but rarely updated. So when people re-visit xfamily.org, it seems a bit stagnant. When you look at the new pages section, it looks quite impressive. What do you think?

Perhaps this section or list could have the last 4 or 5 new pages. I haven't been involved much with the style and design improvements to the Main Page and don't want to mess anything up so maybe someone who has (like Monger) could do this (assuming you think it's a good idea). Peter F. 18:39, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I agree that it's a great idea, though it will be subject to our remembering to regularly update the list. I would be happy to try to set it up, if no one gets to it before me. However, if other editors have any suggestions about where to place it or how to reorganize the home page, I'm all ears. --Monger 19:44, 15 February 2007 (PST)

We may be able to use a bot to automate the updating with a cron job or something. I'll look into this further - perhaps the folks at Wikipedia already have something we can modify for this purpose. I have no idea where to put it. Maybe a small floating box on the right under "Featured Requests"? or we could remove the "Featured Forum" discussions and put a "New Articles" box where that was... Hopefully someone else will have some better suggestions on where to place it. Peter F. 20:59, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I've found there is a way to list a specified number of new articles using something like "{{Special:Newpages/5}}" which would look like this:

There are no results for this report.

However, we might just want the links to be displayed and not the other stuff. Also we would probably want to get rid of the yellow background. If this won't work, there are other (more complicated) ways we could automate the updating. Peter F. 03:17, 16 February 2007 (PST)

How about this:

<newpages> limit=10 </newpages> using the "NewPages" extension by Michael Meffie. We can parse the output any way we like (including removing the date) and can use CSS to make it look any way we like.--Thorwald 14:46, 17 February 2007 (PST)

Excellent. The NewPages extension looks like the way to go once we figure out where to put it. Peter F. 10:42, 22 February 2007 (PST)

I already added an idea to the "New Articles" on the Main page. It has a link (at the very bottom) to the old Special:New Pages.--Thorwald 13:17, 22 February 2007 (PST)

Featured Pages

• What say the other editors about adjusting some of the main featured pages? I propose removing Ricky Rodriguez Memorial, moving FBI to the bottom-right-most position, and adding one or two additional articles. My suggesstion would be our Loving Jesus article. --Monger 20:58, 16 Oct 2005 (CDT)
  • I've removed FBI and Ricky Rodriguez Memorial (due to diminishing interest in those pages), and replaced them with Flirty Fishing (which has been among our most requested pages since the beginning) and Loving Jesus (a more current doctrine which may be of interest to readers because of its unconvential nature). Some captions were also adjusted. Feel free to update/improve as appropriate. If others disagree with my changes, please suggest alternate featured pages here. On a related note, all editors are of course welcome to add to the Spotlight page at any time. --Monger 16:35, 13 Nov 2005 (CST)

Other stuff

• What do you all think about moving most of the content off of the home page and making the home page rely on layout and navigation to be a gateway to the content? We could probably cut down on the home page a lot and make it more useful as we scale. --Craven de Kere 01:00, 23 Mar 2005 (CST)
  • I agree. IMO there is currently far too much text on the home page. --Monger 07:37, 23 Mar 2005 (CST)
    • I've started moving content off, and encourage other editors to help in this reorganization. --Craven de Kere 21:11, 24 Mar 2005 (CST)
      • I have moved some content to Main_Page_OLD --Craven de Kere 00:50, 19 May 2005 (CDT)

• I propose moving the glossary link further down the page, as our content has grown to the point that its merit (to be prominently featured) has diminished. I propose it here instead of just moving it merely because I don't have time to think about where it should go. --Craven de Kere 21:37, 29 Mar 2005 (CST)

• I added the 'favicon.ico' icon to the path (see xF in URL box). This was a super quick and lazy creation. If anyone has ideas on a better version, let me know and I can generate one (or they can do it themselves). This is, of course, not an important addition . . . just something for the aesthetics of the site. Also, are our "colours" #332E87 and #BBBBBB? —Thorwald 23:00, 13 Mar 2005 (CST)

Artists categories

I've removed Category:Musicians from the home page (IMO it's better to keep red links off the home page). I'd also like to remove the Artists category from the home page, as I don't think it's of much interest to most people. However, I think it is well suited to be a subcategory of Category:Current and Former Members and Category:Family Art as it is now. A musicians cat. could likewise go under Current and Former Members as well as Category:Family Music and Audio. --Monger 18:02, 14 Nov 2005 (CST)