Talk:Main Page

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Revision as of 06:10, 30 May 2009 by Maplefanta (talk | contribs)
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Archive of Talk:Main Page: 2005-2007
Our Community Portal is a more appropriate place for questions, comments and discussions that are not directly related to the Main Page.

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. Maplefanta 05:10, 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)

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)