Talk:Main Page

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Archive of Talk:Main Page: 2005-2007
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To new members

Please make your first contribution your own 'user' profile! This will stop showing your name in red and it will give your contributions more validity.

Also, if you are not a native speaker of a language, it might be worthwhile to access hitchwiki.org using Firefox and download the dictionary from Mozilla for the language in which you are writing your contribution, so that you can spell-check what you're typing. If you're editing the English language wiki, I'd suggest to use US spelling, but feel free to voice your objections. Prino 20:36, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

New Advise Article

It could be useful to take the article advice written on the Canada page about Winter Hitch-hiking hazard and maybe some other countries are having some too. They could be grouped together on this same page for all Winter Hazardous country or regions: Russia, Scandinavia, Iceland, Canada, Alaska ... Maplefanta 01:54, 19 January 2008 (CET)

With some regions of Canada having marked way beneath the -50 Celsius on the thermometer last month, if someone knows where to set such page, the already existing info is on the Canada page, it is most likely needed. Maplefanta 03:16, 4 March 2008 (CET)


Bug??

When linking from other sites or typing on the address bar, I often get sent to a double of the page with a capital letter, which looks like the following: http://hitchwiki.org/en/Http://hitchwiki.org/index.php Anyone has an idea why? It seems to always do that if we link hitchwiki city page on the CS wiki travel page. It is done on every page from cswiki Maplefanta 05:10, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

It's because of the intricacies of .htaccess. The CS wiki is linking to e.g. http://www.hitchwiki.org/Paris.
So I checked some stuff and hopefully it's all working fine now. Let me know if you encounter any weird redirect errors. guaka 18:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


Logo update

moved to project:Logo update

Mainpage

I just took the old news out of the mainpage news template. Now there is quite some free space. However, I think it is good to keep the mainpage simple and not too overloaded (and also keep in future just the last 10 site news entries). Any suggestions about what could be added there or how the page could be reordered? I would suggest to move the picture of the now to the left column and also put there a field with the most important content with a symbol (e.g. general info Top Tips, Where, Safety, Signs, First time, Picking up hitchhikers, country info). Maybe one of the design and graphic program gifted people could make some icons for this... It might also be worth to think about which content is important for new people (e.g. move the site news - what is normally for the more frequent users - to the right bottom side... --Alex 19:28, 23 July 2008 (CEST)

I would also suggest to fix the edit buttons in the top box. Looks quite annoying and I guess that this box anyway doesn't need much editing, so maybe we should set it to admin edit only. News, pics, events etc. then can still be edited through the templates, of course. platschisite, wikitalk
agree, doesn't make much sense since these boxes are not much edited in the first place and as you say, the other boxes can still be edited by anyone through the templates --Robino 12:45, 18 August 2008 (CEST)
wanted to propose to rearrange the boxes, one for wiki-news, one for general news, one for events, one for stories (upcoming), and one for 3 (through rss) most recent (planet) blogs. I think the general news should be on top (left), then events, then stories. On the right (help and then wiki-news) or something similar --Robino 12:45, 18 August 2008 (CEST)
Sounds good. Feel free to play around on User:Platschi/Spielwiese, used that page last time for editing ideas of the main page. Let's see how we can make it much better :) platschisite, wikitalk 12:54, 18 August 2008 (CEST)

Language of place name

Can we set some standards for place names? An example, what to use for Brugge (I just bumped into it)? It's now to be found under Bruges, which I think is wrong. Cities should be put under the name they are known in the country they are and if necessary there can be a redirection page for foreign-language versions of the name.

I think we already had that discussion a long time ago, and agreed to use the English names, wherever they are common. This seemed most logical for an English-speaking wiki. In general, we try to stick to wikipedia's standards for that. I think it's not so much of an issue, because we always try to set redirects for all possible languages, so everyone will always find what one's looking for. (Although we are not really consequent, like at Köln). But Bruges seems to be the English name for Brugge. --MrTweek 21:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Missed that discussion, probably before I joined, but my eur 0.02? You do it consistently or you keep the original name, you don't mix the two! --Prino 22:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, we should really clean that up. But I think it's only about 5 articles maximum --MrTweek 00:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
My €0,02; I agree with MrTweek, but it seems logical to me that the native name should be listed, perhaps in the city infobox. I tried to enable that yesterday, but I didn't get it right, so I didn't go ahead with it.clint.hotvedt 12:53, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Economic crisis & hitchhiking

Just wondering about the desirability to work out the economic aspect of hitchhiking. Wechner indicated finance as one the four main motivations for hitchhiking, the other one being adventure, environment and social sharing [1]. The incentive to this question at the moment is mainly the current economic crisis that is in execution among banks, governments, public and business that in all likeliness will last for many many years to come, mostly in Northern America and Europe. Following the recent news there seems to be already some reason to be concerned (which applies mostly to people who are in debt). In other words - would economic recession / depression increase again the number of hitchhikers, which in the US and Europe basicly used to be in decline since the 1980s. Will hitchhiking in the US and EU increase and popularize due to increasing poverty in the coming ten to twenty years? Such macro economic developments are fascinating. --Fverhart 15:49, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Let's start an article about this! Not yet sure about the name, but economy will do :) 212.143.159.96 20:03, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Frontpage is evolving

Good! Frontpage is going trough changes at the very begining of the 2009. :-) Should "Basics" and "Places" be more bigger and first in line, when reader starts from top-left -corner? I can try to visualize my idea when i have more time. Icons are great spice to bring some colours, maybe they should be bigger? -Mikael 21:19, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Haha, I had exactly the same idea this morning :) You are welcome to tweak the site a bit. Oh, and if you are in IRC, you might want to drop by in #hitchhiking@freenode ;) --MrTweek 22:53, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually i came out with these rather big changes. :-) Comments? I didn't test it with IE's yet (i'm working with OSX). Design is really close to the fi.wikipedia -frontpage. -Mikael 01:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Yeah man, I love it :) I can test it in IE tomorrow. --MrTweek 15:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
About compatibility: With Firefox 3.0.3 it looks great, with IE7 the fonts look weird, also the top Hitchwiki text is somehow cut below, so only 3/4 of the text is visible. All other boxes are okay, though. Will test with Safari Browser later. --Platschi 16:56, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Here it works perfect in Safari. In IE7, the right border of the boxes is missing. All content is visible, so only a minor issue. --MrTweek 17:00, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Hi! Great to see it in action. :-) I tested it in Safari 3.21 under OSX - works great. I also tweaked a inline CSS of the H1-element ("Hitchwiki"-title). Can somebody test it in IE6 and 7? I think clipping problem was commong line-height -bug in IE. I'll do some additional testing at office tomorrow. -Mikael 20:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Looks goog in Google Chrome except that left boxes are sqeezed a bit which creates 2,5 cm empty space under the Pictures of the Moment. --Sigurdas 10:05, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
The left column is too small on the 9" screen of my Acer Aspire One. I've tried playing a bit with the width but I didn't quickly manage to fix it. guaka 10:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I have the same 'problem'. Also I would find it cool to have pictures on the screen without scrolling and also have the links to different hitchhikers available... this makes the wiki more personal. --Alex 11:01, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I added "min-width" -attribute to the left column. It's not working with IE5-6, but what the heck. ;-) Another thing would be taking 4th picture out from the gallery, so right column could shrink smaller with small resolutions. I wouldn't add list of hitchhikers visible by default, but how about show/hide -stylish box? Maybe under "Also on Hitchwiki". -Mikael 17:23, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
'I wouldn't add list of hitchhikers visible by default' - Why not? Because there are not all contributers? Not a big thing in my opinion, not everybody wants to be linked there and it could be named accordingly. I can't think of any other reasons... but I am curious to get to know some more views on this. My point is that it gives a more personal touch to the technical wiki, it is about real people (as somebody also stated in why he works for Hitchwiki). Arguments around this more personal touch of Hitchwiki are welcomed too. --Alex 04:23, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
I think this wiki is quite personal already with or without hichhikres-list. My top reason was to prevent main page to grow too heavy with lot's of text/link mass, though i'd also like to see some quick way to browse active hitchwiki-users. -Mikael 17:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I tested to float gallery to the right, but it's not working with smaller (under 1200px width) resolutions. :-/ With 24" It's looking great. :-D -Mikael 17:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
On Win ME (yes, ppl still seem to use it) with Firefox 2.0 and 1024x768 Screen the two boxes (Places/Basics) are pretty narrow. Changing min-width doesn't help. In IE6 the site looks horrible, but who is using IE6 anyway? Maybe we should add an "Best seen with firefox" whatever button the the Start Page?--Platschi 14:59, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
The News and Events boxes don't adapt themselves to the screenwidth, which is extremely annoying! Prino 00:28, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
I did some editing for the CSS and tested it with IE 5.5-7 under Windows XP. These worked as well: safari 3 (win/mac), firefox 3 (win/mac), opera 9.6 (win/mac). With IE6 and under png-transparengy doesn't work (needs JS-hack or background-color added to the images), first box doesn't have top-margin and it's contents had too big line-height. These are not minor problems. I also took 4rd PotM-image away, so page should now scale better with small screens (like tiny 9" computers). -Mikael 17:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Maybe it would be better to show less news entries on the startpage? So the event box would be visible on the first sight on smaller screens. Upcoming events should catch more interest than 4 month old news, or? --Globetrotter tt 08:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Just reduced the news-items to three, as the previous ones were outdated anyway. Better now on smaller screens :-) ? --Platschi 11:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Could anyone able give some help to clean up the design of the frontpage of the French version of Hitchwiki? I'm not very used to this kind of job, but I find it awful compared to the English one. Thanks! --Grégoire 12:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
@Grégoire it's on my todo list --xo 02:31, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

search-field

I don't know if somebody already suggested it, but is it possible to move the search-field more up!? I think it's the most used field on the main page and should be directly under the hitchwiki-picture. Especially for smaller monitors, eg netbooks, you have to scroll down to reach it ;-) --jeensg 13:53, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm okay with it. What do other people think? guaka 23:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
good idea! --Platschi 09:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the idea, and I would even suggest to make the field a bit larger.--Grégoire 09:27, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Hey, is it possible to move it up some time? I mean, I don't know much about the construction and whether it's hard to do so, maybe we just forgot about it? --jeensg 11:51, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, we forgot. Or rather: nobody felt responsible for doing it. I did it now. --MrTweek 11:28, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, I really do like it! --jeensg 22:06, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

New colors, logo and such

Hello! We've been building a new hitchwiki maps and some days ago I designed a new GUI for it. I got an idea to bring that logo and colors also to the Hitchwiki and so far it looks like this. What do you think? If you don't like colors, at least we could use this structure?

Hand in logo is from hitchgathering.org -logo, since it was CC-by-SA. :-) Is that okay? I also put randomroads and hitchgathering -links to the main menu.

That square light box is a hovered link.

-Mikael 17:35, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Where is the "Like it" Button? ;) Looks great, maybe only the color of the article count could be a bit darker, as here it looks pretty close to the background color. Or it's just my eyes that are quite bad :P The logo is cool, it's simple and says it all. Lovei t. Anyway, go for it, Mikael! --Platschi 20:47, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I love it :) If you want, just install it to Hitchwiki:Start Page --MrTweek 13:58, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Updated PNGs

I've updated a whole bunch of PNGs with versions that were generated directly from the SVG from Wikipedia (with the GIMP). Height is around 400 pixels (or less) to keep the PNGs from adding dithered colors. Resulting PNGs were optimized with PNGOUT

So far I've done all flags for the countries I have visited. Flags for the additional nationalities of drivers that gave me rides will follow (in a future) Prino 13:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

By the way, it should be possible to upload SVGs here. That way we could completely avoid any conversion problems. --MrTweek 13:56, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
The File upload page does not seem to allow .SVG, but I haven't tried it. However, you must be aware that older browsers do not support .SVG files and I'm not sure if one of the newer (aka the piece of junk from M$) ones does. Also, if I try to upload Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg I get the following message:

"# A file with this name exists already, please check File:Flag of the Netherlands.svg if you are not sure if you want to change it."

Clicking on the link will go to a page that tells me

"This file is from a shared repository and may be used by other projects. The description on its file description page there is shown below"

And it doesn't show up in Special:ListFiles, so how does the link to Wikimedia Commons work? Another problem is of course the case-sensitivity, if I try to upload "Flag_of_The_Netherlands.svg", the system will happily let me do so. Prino 19:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Also, I wonder what the reason is, to re-upload images in the same resolution? They look completely the same for me. --MrTweek 14:15, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
The PNGs I uploaded are exactly the same, but PNGOUT is capable of compressing them significantly better in many cases, which should save some bandwidth... Look at some of the bigger files I replaced in the changelog! Prino 19:23, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
This a .SVG file
Hmm, ok. First of all: Hitchwiki is linked to wikimedia commons. That means, you can just use any file uploaded to wikimedia commons here. And that is also the reason for your error message: If you upload a file, that is also uploaded to wikimedia commons, you would replace it locally. This is fine, you can do that. It doesn't make much sense to upload the same file again, though.
It doesn't really matter wether a browser supports svg. The wiki renders them to png pr jpg anyway. But it can render them in a much better quality, no matter which size they will have. So, in general, SVG is always better than PNG or JPG, but not always possible.
I think bandwith is not so much of an issue nowadays. All modern browsers support on-the-fly-compression anyway, so it will probably not make any difference at all. --MrTweek 21:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Navigation

On the right side sucks, BIG time...

And while I'm writing this, the table with foreign characters shows as a series of "charinsert" tags, possibly because it's missing a final '}' Prino (talk) 20:52, 1 October 2012 (CEST)

And the colour of the links, a horrible blue also stinks. Why was this change required, what was wrong with the old design? Prino (talk) 22:03, 1 October 2012 (CEST)
And 9 cm of grey screen on either side of the text on a 23" monitor is also really useful. Prino (talk) 11:56, 2 October 2012 (CEST)
I like Mikael's new design but the old Monobook one is useful indeed. So go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering and choose MonoBook. That's what I just did, there are still some tidbits not working but I'll fix them in MediaWiki:Monobook.css.
Charinsert is broken because the extension doesn't work anymore with MediaWiki 1.19. Will try to fix that as well today. guaka (talk) 12:05, 2 October 2012 (CEST)

Bug

Hey guys - having trouble adding places? It gives an error message and then you can't add anything Anyone else experiencing this problem? 15th November 2016.

All templates are out of order, because they have a "{{ #" at their beginning in the whole wiki. -GeorgDerReisende (talk) 09:51, 4 October 2012 (CEST)

Thanks for noting. We know about this bug, but as far as I know, it only affect the Isin-Template? A quick Check on Germany which has a lot of templates shows me that most of them work fine. Please let us know if you know of any specific template that is broken as well --MrTweek (talk) 09:58, 4 October 2012 (CEST)
many templates which I use for the motorways are broken: AB-AS-blau.svg Autobahn junction.png Autobahn gasstation.png Autobahn Restaurant.png Verygood.png (very good) Good.png (good), look at A 1 --GeorgDerReisende (talk) 14:44, 8 October 2012 (CEST)
  • I don't know about the templates (except IsIn) but the all the links to Trashwiki aren't in the toolbow anymore, but at the end of the page... I speak about the french version (exemple: [2], at the end of the page). For the english version, they just disappeared... Even if they are still in the editing page. --Klodreamer (talk) 18:34, 9 October 2012 (CEST)
  • It seems to me, that for all pictures, which have been uploaded before October, the original files have been gone. That lead to the above problem, that my templates don't run any more. --GeorgDerReisende (talk) 17:55, 15 October 2012 (CEST)
I just re-imported them, so most images should work again. Please let me know, if there are still a lot missing. If there are only a few missing, we can just upload them again manually. --MrTweek(talk) 04:32, 28 October 2012 (CET)
  • I'm already missing some symbols: Autobahn Restaurant.png Average.png (average) Bad.png (bad) Senseless.png (senseless), the logo don't show up, in the German wiki also the template gut has no picture. --GeorgDerReisende (talk) 16:06, 3 November 2012 (CET)

new bug

In the German part of this wiki actually I can't make edits, I always gets the answer: "Es ist ein Datenbankabfragefehler aufgetreten. Dies könnte auf einen Fehler in der Software hindeuten." --GeorgDerReisende (talk) 09:12, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Trustroots advertisement

In my opinion the advertisement for Trustroots does not need to be here for years, mainly because Hitchwiki could (should!) behave like a proper commercial free, independent wiki, without its own agenda. The advertisement can repel potential users from Hitchwiki. Online hospex is not the same as hitch-hiking either and certainly not all hitch-hikers are interested in such service. --Fverhart (talk) 23:13, 21 July 2016 (CEST)