Hitchwiki talk:Start Page

Soon, when the international wikis are get a little bigger, we might want to have a neutral starting page, like this: http://dev.hitchwiki.org/ Anyone wants to make a better layout? --MrTweek site, wikitalk 14:51, 21 September 2007 (CEST)


 * Good idea. The page could simply be fetched from this wiki, just use action=render :) And you can even put the CSS on this wiki. Then we can just wait till someone feels like improving the layout. guaka site, wikitalk 01:30, 24 September 2007 (CEST)

Some ideas: guaka site, wikitalk 22:47, 24 September 2007 (CEST)
 * add number of articles
 * add a random hitchhike picture
 * make it look nice ;)


 * Now, I wonder wether we should already activate this start page. On the one hand, I've got the feeling that most visitors don't even realise, that there are more language versions. So this would surely drive more users to all these wikis. On the other hand, people might be disappointed to find so less information in their language, that they would go away (instead of being happy about all the English pages). The working version is available here. What do you think? --MrTweek site, wikitalk 15:02, 9 October 2007 (CEST)
 * I was positively surprised when I looked on this article earlier today. It really improved and looks quite inviting right now. (I do not like the redirect which is on hitchwiki.org right now, why not a .htaccess redirect?) I think it would be good to put it online, as you said, most people won't even realize that there is a hitchwiki in their language. The nice thing is that you have an article count on the page as well, so they see that there other wikis with more articles (maybe they become eager to overcome the others) and check them out.... --Alex 01:12, 10 October 2007 (CEST)


 * I think it's ready to go. The question is, which URL should lead there? guaka site, wikitalk 14:35, 15 October 2007 (CEST)
 * I would use http://hitchwiki.org/ and http://www.hitchwiki.org/, but direct links like http://www.hitchwiki.org/Hannover would redirect to the appropriate page on en.hitchwiki.org, to avoid breaking direct links in forums, blogs, etc. Try http://dev.hitchwiki.org/ and http://dev.hitchwiki.org/Italy Seems to work. --MrTweek site, wikitalk 14:39, 15 October 2007 (CEST)
 * He, looks good. Guess MrTweek's idea is good, let the direct links lead to the English sites. Maybe we should also add an automatic redirect, if users go on to the start page and cannot decide to which wiki they want to go, after 15 seconds (or more/less) they would be redirected to the english one. further, maybe some information box under the choice of language would be good, so that people directly know that this is Wiki, what is does and what it stands for. (sometimes i think there are people outside who do no know what is meant by a wiki). bla. etc. let's set it online, the current redirect page isn't that nice ;) platschi site, wikitalk 15:02, 15 October 2007 (CEST)
 * I think people can choose their language before they know what this is ;) If we want to explain that on the Start Page, we would have to explain it in all languages. I'll activate it now --MrTweek site, wikitalk 15:12, 15 October 2007 (CEST)

2nd most accessed page
In no time this page is number 2 of the most accessed pages. Maybe there is something we can do with it because of that? E.g. something that promotes hitchhiking? Technical note: It could also be good to cache the action=render content in the index.php script, to relieve the server a tiny bit. guaka site, wikitalk 17:51, 6 November 2007 (CET)

I think the stylesheet is not taken over from Hitchwiki. It would be cool to use the same CSS, and if done properly it wouldn't really hurt our bandwidth. guaka site, wikitalk 18:02, 6 November 2007 (CET)


 * I just added http://en.hitchwiki.org/skins/monobook/main.css. Hope that's the correct/only one? Don't worry about server load, it's almost zero. --MrTweek site, wikitalk 20:08, 6 November 2007 (CET)

Some ideas
For our pagerank it would be good to create some more activity on the start page. Two ideas: If you give me the right permissions I'll see if I can get 2. done, somehow based on the RSS feed or so. guaka site, wikitalk 04:41, 19 June 2008 (CEST)
 * 1) Include http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RandomImage with a list of images used for picture of the now.
 * 2) Include a small rendered version of the page(s) that have been edited last.
 * Sounds good. You should have enough permissions for both of them. However, I think images do not have any impact on page rank. But it'll look nicer anyway :) For more pagerank, I was thinking about changing the links from ie. fr.hitchwiki.org/Blah to www.hitchwiki.org/fr/Blah. I don't like changing everything again, but this way, search engines will see everything as one page, not as 6 (or 8) different ones. --MrTweek 11:08, 19 June 2008 (CEST)
 * I just changed the links. Nothing should change for users, but in a technical way, this is much better to handle. Oh, and it might help our findability in search engines. --MrTweek 14:08, 30 June 2008 (CEST)

Can we add a br after 4 languages and also center the whole page? --79.192.155.115 12:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Check it out :) -- by the way, if you have more ideas, just put them here and I'll see what I can do.  If you actually log in you could also edit stuff directly (though not directly this page if you're not a sysop here, but you can make a copy and if we like it move it back to this page). guaka 17:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Redesign, meta tags
I added meta tags and included the appropriate CSS from the PHP file that includes this. Any suggestions for meta tags besides "hitchhiking,wiki,autostop,trampen,guide"? Complaints and suggestions about the redesign are welcome as well of course. guaka site, wikitalk 10:17, 15 September 2008 (CEST)

Almost 2000
We're on 1998 articles in 8 languages now :) guaka 12:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Redesign
I think it was time for some changes. It's good to have changing content on the front page, so I included the News template. To do:
 * It all needs to be moved around a bit now.
 * It would be great if it were somehow possible to include the German (and other?) news template as well.

Proposals: What do you think? guaka 02:39, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Remove "Choose a language", remove "welcome". - These words are not really needed
 * Add some concise info about hitchhiking and hitchwiki, in English and as many as we can get (not limited to our versions of Hitchwiki).
 * I would rather keep it more simple. I think it looks a little confusing, if you are a first-time visitor. Dynamic content is good indeed, but I would rather reduce the English speaking part as much as possible.
 * Maybe there's a plugin that detects the browser language and displays stuff in the users language
 * About "Choose a language" and "welcome": Yes, removing them might simplify the whole page.

--MrTweek 08:28, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * So, remove the about-i18n and news until we have a way to let it depend on the browser language? Or maybe make the pics more prominenent and the English stuff a bit smaller. guaka 19:03, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * after adding another language, which is pretty cool, i would suggest removing the info/news/picture of the month boxes, as it looks pretty much crowded on the start page now. on bigger screens it's kind of okay, but on a netbook it just looks horrible. my2cents, if nobody complains, will remove them by the begin of next week :) --Platschi 16:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Might look crowded but some more text on the frontpage will make it easier for people to find Hitchwiki through Google. I'll see if I can do it in a nicer way... guaka 10:52, 8 April 2010 (UTC)