Talk:Main Page

This page is for comments and suggestions for the Main Page of the CS Wiki. This is not for questions about Oblivion, the Construction Set, or modding in general. Please put these questions in appropriate places. Suggestions for the Wiki overall (not this page specifically) may go here, but are probably more appropriate at the Community Portal.

Main Page Talk Archives:

• Archive 01
• Archive 02

Questions should go to the forums

This is not the place to ask random questions about the CS. The only things that should be discussed here are things related to the use and structure of the wiki itself. Direct CS questions to the Construction Set forum.

The admins are going to start enforcing this policy, so you should stop putting questions here or they are likely to be rolled back.

--Kkuhlmann 08:49, 10 April 2006 (EDT)

Suggestions for the Main Page

Dragoon Wraith TALK 00:27, 27 June 2007 (EDT): Please post any suggestions you may have for improving the Main Page here. Please give your suggestion a tier-two header (=='s on either side), and please sign it with ~~~~.

Suggestion: Tutorial's link

I would like to see a link on the main page that directs you to page listing all the tutorials currently on the wiki. I'm not sure if such a page exists yet but a link on the main page would definately be nice. The way I see it, it would direct more traffic to the tutorials section which would in turn increase the quality and diversity of tutorials on this wiki.
--Antares 00:27, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

I agree, it's the most used section of the Wiki, so a link on the main page would make sense. I'm thinking of next to the Index, Categories and Featured Content links.

Antares, there's such a listing here: Category:Tutorials

--Qazaaq 04:02, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

Suggestion : User's Online

How about a counter at the bottom of the screen, showing number of people viewing the current page, and list of registered members online in the bottom of the main page ? Just like in any forum script. -- shademe 08:52, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

Number of users, easy. Currently viewing the page? No idea. That would have to be something Bethesda implements. I could ask about it if people really want it, but I dunno, never been a big concern for me.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 11:54, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

A thoroughly excellent idea, it would be great to see which registered users are online as I believe it could positively impact the speed at which things are achieved/questions are answered. I have to say I'm with DragoonWraith on the Currently viewing page idea, although it would be cool and nice I do not see it as being a big deal. I am impartial on the latter of those two, all for the former though.

--Antares 06:08, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

What I meant was something like this ...

700px

... in the main page for starters. And perhaps a internal IM applet/shoutbox, for discussion of the registered members ? -- shademe 09:17, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

Well, it would have to be Bethesda doing it. But I can ask. Don't hold your breath, though; the Wiki is not high on the list of priorities, so anything that involves more than usual maintenance is often a lot to ask. Asking them to go and find some kind of applet that does this, or code it themselves, is probably more than we can hope for.

If you want to improve the chances, you could help them out with this by finding something for them that I can link them to. Then they would only have to implement it, which could happen, perhaps.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 10:25, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

Here's a link to [phpBB]. You probably know about this, but this is a bulletin board script. It should have the script for the user's online. Maybe it can be extrapolated into the WiKi's - It should be fairly easy considering the wiki's running on phP -- shademe 05:08, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

I'm not against the idea, doesn't really matter to me, but the idea that it's easy because the Wiki is also coded in PHP is false. The Wiki's user system is extremely different from a forum's. Adding the PHP code from phpBB is most likely even harder than writing it from scratch. If you want any chance of getting this you'll need to find a MediaWiki extension that does this. Extensions are relatively easy to install, but that's not all, probably changes to the stylesheet are also necessary. It's Bethesda's and was made to work with extras like this. This greatly reduces the chances of getting this feature installed. Unless you can find an extension, don't even count on it. See here for MediaWiki extensions.

--Qazaaq 17:05, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Well, I was digging into MediaWiKi's extension and found a few : [ShoutBox], [], [AjaX Version of Who's Online], [Set Online status preference]. Think this can be implemented ( sorry If this seems dumb, I a client-sided coder ) ? helloo ... ? -- shademe 07:54, 2 October 2008 (EDT)

I'd prefer the Who's Online extension (not my decision though) but that one requires MediaWiki 1.11+ and we're running 1.10.0 here. Only the ShoutBox is compatible with 1.10.0, but it doesn't really sound like what we're looking for. Maybe there are older versions of the other extension available.

--Qazaaq 12:55, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

It's conceivable that upgrading the Wiki would be possible. They've done it in the past. We could also ask how much that would entail. Considering that they have installed newer versions for other Wikis, they would know what they would need to do and whether or not it's worth it.

I know newer Wikis support Redirects being put in Categories, which I find desirable. Anyone know of any other advantages of the newer Wiki version?

Dragoon Wraith TALK 14:25, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

It's been awhile, but what's the new on this ? -- shademe 12:37, 11 January 2009 (EST)

Bethesda intends to update the Wiki to v1.14 once v1.14 comes out, I believe (v1.14 is currently in beta, and is being used on WikiMedia Foundation sites like Wikipedia); at that point, we'll look into this. Seems like an update needs to happen before most of those will work.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 12:59, 11 January 2009 (EST)

It is a rather good idea, as it implements how popular the page is, or how useful it can be, as if it's unpopular people wouldn't often go to it and if it's useless then peopl wouldn't read right through it much, all in all, a splendid idea, as i've seen it on other websites and i find it useful! --Oblivious12123 12:30, 28 December 2009 (EST)

Heads-up for new users

Why not write a bot to automatically add an entry, one that informs them about the wiki's policy on asking questions, to the TALK page of new users ? That could help with keeping down the creation of unnecessary new articles.
shadeMe ^TALK 18:23, 4 October 2009 (EDT)

Hmm... I'm not certain that the bot's allowed to be "always on" like that. I'm also not certain how to configure it to do that (though I know it can). Hmm... I'll look into it. Typically those things go on their Talk page after they've made their first Edit though.

Someone want to write a welcome message thing, then?

Dragoon Wraith TALK 21:12, 31 January 2010 (EST)

Heh, it'd probably be more of a "go away" message. In any case, I'm willing to try.

shadeMe ^TALK 21:29, 31 January 2010 (EST)

I did some "research" about bots on some other wiki's and I found an article containing a script that welcomes new users (here). That page seemed to be part of an entire wiki about bots:(here).

I hope this information helps.

--Darkness X 11:12, 5 May 2010 (EDT)

Ideas to support newbies:

The front page displays the featured article, which at the moment is 'a beginners' guide' right?

So when a new featured article gets chosen, the newbies may get stuck looking for basic tutorials. Maybe we should keep the beginners' guide on the main page, after a new featured article is selected. It would make things simpler for newbies and more convenient and less frustrating and time consuming... --Oblivious12123 12:25, 28 December 2009 (EST)

New ideas to support newbies should be left in this section, not a new one, please leave a line and start anew, then reinsert this piece of writing at the bottom of your work

That's a pretty good idea. Currently, though, I don't think the Beginner's Guide is in much danger of being shuffled off... *shrug* When we're looking to change it, yes, I think that's a good plan.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 21:10, 31 January 2010 (EST)

May 28, 2011 MediaWiki Update

The Wiki has, for the first time in a long time, had its version of MediaWiki updated. This is wonderful news, generally speaking.

Unfortunately, it seems to have broken the Liquid Style custom CSS, and there may be a few niggling details that need to be fixed as well. Please post anything you find odd here; I'll try to communicate this with Bethsoft.

List of issues:

• The box around categories look very odd, and it's there even if a page does not have any categories.
• Custom signatures appear to have been reset and their maximum length reduced. At least, mine was too long and was reset, but it may have only been reset because it was too long.
• Liquid Style custom skin needs to be updated.

That last one is obviously not Bethesda's problem, heh. I'll be trying to fix that.
Dragoon Wraith TALK 17:43, 28 May 2011 (EDT)

This is good news, I guess. For anyone else wondering; we're now running 1.16.5, which is the most recent stable version of MediaWiki. The GECK Wiki is still running 1.13.2 which was released in October 2008.

If I can, I'll take some time to look into the liquid style.

--Qazaaq 11:11, 30 May 2011 (EDT)

Search is broken

Every time I try to search for anything, it brings me to a blank page. Can someone please do something about it? - ZuTheSkunk (talk) 14:14, 11 December 2014 (EST)

Need to replace the captcha system

The captcha system (used to weed out bots when trying to create an account, and to submit an edit) is hosed.

• More than half the time it does not load at all.
• When it does, it almost always presents a picture-moving puzzle, which is not functional in Chrome, or any other browser I tried other than an old copy of Internet Explorer. So, I cannot edit this site other than by resorting the worst browser on earth, which is now old Microsoft abandonware that won't even work in future versions of Windows. Just get the regular captcha that 99% of captcha-using sites use, "I am not a robot". I works universally.

Darklocq (talk) 03:50, 9 May 2018 (EDT)

Oh, hell, it's even worse than I thought. I can't edit actual articles here, only talk pages, because the articles are using a different captcha that even fails in IE. It's the "pick all squares with street signs" one. After you successfully do it, you're returned to the page, but minus the edits you just made, and you try to do them again, the same thing happens. I just tried 5 times in a row to fix a typo, and can't do it. No wonder no one's editing this site any longer. It's broken. PS: It's taken me at least 20 tries, in IE, to even save this comment. Darklocq (talk) 04:12, 9 May 2018 (EDT)