Since I'm really addicted to those webpages that use flat UI, I'm starting to turn this wiki's UI into a flat one too. However, it's quite hard because Wikia decided to stick with skeuomorphism (realistic) UI, and I ain't that good at web designing too.
The flat UI is going to look cleaner and simpler than the previous UI. It also makes our wiki more mature.
Also, by eliminating the background, it helps save some data too, in case if you use a tablet and cellular data to access this wiki.
What I want in this UI
The final result should at least look like this (click to enlarge).
Wiki navigation stretches to the rightmost side of the page.
No borders between the page title and the content, as well as some frames.
Gradient-less buttons and whatnot.
Flat, modernized buttons, without gradients.
Overall, it makes this wiki look more modern in a way. No need those backgrounds and all that crap. Just a clean, mostly border-free UI.
Note that the unnecessary line break between the edit button and the page content is caused by a Wikia coding issue. There's nothing I can do to fix it. It's Wikia's fault really.
I know some of the guys just won't like it, but in my opinion, it makes this wiki look professional.
Anyone who wants to participate can simply leave a message on my wall, or my talk page in PvZ wiki.
OK, so I'm outta ideas for the wiki maintenance, because there seem to be nothing that I could tweak. So, I'll just leave everything like this for an indefinite amount of time.
The last change was the background, and there will be no changes for an unknown amount of time.
Also, I'm starting to get bored writing stuff here, and I prefer doing crazy stuff, like having fun with malware in VMWare (literally).
However it doesn't mean that I won't come back; it just means that I'll mostly do something else than going here.
Please leave messages on my talk page in PvZ wiki, since it's just easier to check them out there.
Well, actually, no need. I usually do updates every month, and I never use the same thread to post update notes, since I put the update date stamp in the title. Also, forum is rarely used, and it's just plain unnecessary to highlight. This thing just points out what's changed on this wiki, in case if someone goes to the forum and look for random things.
Since Windows 10 consumes like 1GB of data every day thanks to its automatic "updates", I need to be less active now. I mean, my network connection is metered and I can only use like 1GB every month.
I prefer using my phone now, to check the wiki, but typing on my phone is HARD and produces lots of typos and grammar errors. You know, I make those zombie fanfics every week, and I don't wanna see too much spelling and grammar errors on them.
The verdict is, DON'T USE WINDOWS 10 IF YOU HAVE A METERED CONNECTION. IT'LL CONSUME TOO MUCH DATA AND RUIN YOUR LIFE. SRSLY.
Did another stuff to the wiki. Well, it's pretty minor, but I put it here in case if you didn't notice it already. Things included:
Global navigation (the thing that always sits at the top of the page) patch. Recently, the notifications icon and the drop-down chevron glitched out (not so noticeable, but you'd see it if you looked closely), but I fixed it now.
Made some help topics that will help admins doing stuff here. You can see it on the Help and FAQs section on the wiki navigation.
Time for another wiki update! Since the JS editing and all other MediaWiki editing are back up, then here are some changes I made:
We've got a new wordmark! This is actually still a placeholder, but I may stick with it if this one looks better than others I'll make. Also, the wordmark is made using a 750x195 pixels image thanks to a JS tweak. Normally, you can't use wordmarks larger than 250x65 pixels, but with this tweak, you can. Even the new wordmark's dimensions is 9 times larger than the maximum allowed.
Removed the rainbow links since some people think that it's annoying.
Background tweak, this was actually done on August 24, but ended up being in this update history since it's pretty major. Using a CSS tweak, I was able to use background images larger than 300 KB. The image size is 951 KB, which means 3.17 times bigger than maximum allowed. Thanks to AWikiBoy521 for compressing the image using pngcrush.
Made the promotion rules easier to get, since this wiki has a low traffic and activity.
Proposed updates
Make the font, background, and theme customizable (i.e. "personal wiki appearance"). This only affects your account.
Make the font size bigger, since the Proxima Nova font works better with bigger font size.
Make a better wordmark.
Any feedback, suggestions, or found an issue? Tell me by posting a reply below!
Everything is back up now. Rainbow links are now back up and anything else have been working again. I closed this thread to prevent junk messages and spam.
You may have noticed that the rainbow links and some other features are now gone. This happens because Wikia decided to temporarily disable all Javascript and CSS scripts all over Wikia for security reasons.
Exceptions are Wikia.css, Common.css and Monobook.css, which are the minimum CSS scripts, and that's why those custom fonts and staff member colors still function, since I put them in Wikia.css.
All admins (including me) can't edit them right now because of this, but we should be able to do that again soon.
I don't know why it's related to CSS and Javascript but possible reasons are:
Since they (Wikia) are patching those exploits, enabling CSS and Javascript may cause severe issues, like inaccessible pages, pages fail to load, etc.
Some scripts may be the issue, so disabling them should be enough for now.
Certain Javascript and CSS scripts are known to cause security issues.
I'll update this thread if the Javascript and other CSS scripts are editable and back up.
Since implementing things to Wikia aren't easy, and some of them just don't work, I decided to stop the maintenance I planned before. Sorry, but some of the features can't be implemented here, due to MediaWiki limitations.
I'm just gonna switch back to minor maintenance instead.
Well, got some few minor maintenances here. Some of the things can only be used by admins, though.
BTW, I had to do EVERYTHING by myself. THERE ARE NO OTHER ACTIVE ADMINS BUT ME. Unfortunately, I'm not a bureaucrat, and there are no active bureaucrats so I can't promote good people like Iamarepeater to admin.
New features
Request fanfic protection
You can now request full protection for your fanfic! Actually inspired by Creepypasta Wiki/Trollpasta Wiki, since they sometimes fully protect high-traffic pages, featured pages and finished pages.
It's completely reversible. To request for unprotection, simply request an admin to unprotect it.
How to do it
Go to an admin's message wall (preferably me, since I'm currently the only active admin)
Leave a message to him/her, with "Requesting protection of X page" where X is your fanfic name. MAKE SURE TO WRITE THE TITLE CORRECTLY, OR ELSE THE ADMIN MAY HAVE DIFFICULTIES FINDING YOUR FANFIC!
Explain the reason why would you want to protect it (e.g. because it's a finished fanfic, high-traffic fanfic, etc.), then post it.
Wait for a few hours/days/weeks/months (depends on their activity), until they protected your fanfic.
Self-explanatory. It censors out most of the swears out there. From Creepypasta Wiki. Unfortunately, it doesn't work yet (I need to ask people or a Wikia staff from Community Central to make it to work)
Sometimes, when a page has been deleted multiple times, an admin may protect it. If you try to edit it (by adding "?action=edit" on the URL bar right after the page name), you'll see a message telling you that the title has been protected from creation.
New text:
This title has been protected from creation. The reason given is "$2". You may also wish to check the deletion log for this page.
Conclusion
Well, I admit that I took all the MediaWiki things from Creepypasta Wiki, but the reason why I'm doing it is because CP Wiki is also a literature wiki, so that most of the MediaWiki contents there should also be relevant to this wiki too. I'm not a fanboy of CP Wiki or anything, but I think that CP Wiki's MediaWiki stuffs are pretty nice.
UPDATE: May 29, 2015
Got some minor update here.
I changed the font to Proxima Nova! Now the entire wiki's font looks sleeker than the regular Arial font. You should see the differences between the Arial and the new Proxima Nova.
I worked hard to get this to work since it doesn't work on first attempt. Finally converted the font to TTF and WOFF and it worked.
Well, I believe no one will hear me. But I'll post it here anyways.
I'm actually doing a major maintenance on this wiki since this wiki's stuff haven't been updated for few months, or maybe years.
What I'm gonna do:
Doing some cleanup to some threads. This means that some threads will be removed if they lack of quality.
Adding abuse filter, just like Creepypasta Wiki, to prevent profane languages from being used in a page/fanfic.
Voting will be done in the forum, instead of pages. Looks PvZ wiki-ish, but I found out that it's easier and better to do votes in the forum than in pages.
New wiki rules.
Updating the main page.
New wiki themes (e.g. page background, wordmark, wiki navigation background, etc.)
Some new features. This includes:
PvZ wiki cursor (or a new cursor if I (or you) have a better one)
Interesting rainbow text effect, for userpages. This uses some MediaWiki stuff so only admins and bureaucrats can make it. (Source code coming soon, doesn't work yet for Wikia)
New templates.
Some stuff that I've done:
New transparent wiki wordmark
New promotion rules
Links (except for those colored staff links) will have a rainbow effect if you hover on them. Looks pretty cool, actually!
Updated wiki navigation.
The maintenance will go kinda slow, but it should be done in only a few months. Also, the wiki will look even better than before, even though only few people will found (and make some fanfics/edits) on this wiki.
BTW, after a person answered my questiobn above this thread will be closed and I'll make a new one 'cuz 200+ replies is too full and even the repeating background is now no longer on the bottom.
This is used to mark a page as semi-protected like Wikipedia one. This uses the same code as PvZ wiki's Featured article template but the image and the text are modified.
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