MediaWiki talk:Sidebar

Recent Changes

Having recent changes all the way down under misc is really screwing me up. I would go:

* general
** mainpage|mainpage
** http://www.uesp.net/phpbb/ | Forums
** Special:Search |Search
** recentchanges-url|recentchanges
** randompage-url|randompage
** UESPWiki:About |About
** UESPWiki:Donate|sitesupport
** portal-url|portal
** http://www.uesp.net/oldindex.shtml | Old Site
[...]

—Andux^␅ 11:42, 15 February 2006 (EST)

Wrye's Changes

Made a couple of requested changes:

• Added Tamriel. I recall that it used to be on the linkbar, but I think it got lost in November 2005 when Dave was moving to new server.
• Removed Search link since the search box is already present.
• Moved recent changes up, as requested above. Seemed reasonable to me since it's suhc a useful link for editors.
• Fixed the Morrowind Summit link to Planet Elder Scrolls.
• Removed Bethsoft link, since there's already two bethesda links and removing it brings the search box a little higher (thus making it more accessible). --Wrye 22:23, 1 April 2006 (EST)

Yup, looks all fine too me. Not sure when I lost the Tamriel link as I noticed it was missing recently. -- DaveH 13:56, 3 April 2006 (EDT)

IRC Confusion

I left EFFnet in either 1995 or 1996 for DALnet, and I'm happy at DALnet. I'm not using the UESP because I don't like either leaving DALnet for some unknown lands, or running multiple connections (I can barely keep up with five channels, so never mind multiple channels on multiple networks).

But I agree the average individual playing Oblivion can't even spell IRC, let alone connect to it. In my experience the "hip kids" don't use it because none of their friends use it (the same people with whom they may visit just by walking ½ of a block in any direction…), and no one wants to be a trend-setter when it means being a lonely trend-setter. So, I use IRC and the rest of the world uses AIM/YIM/MSN/ICQ/MIC/KEY/MOU/SE/ETC/wabbajack wabbajack wabbajack.
Uniblab 23:35, 29 November 2006 (EST)

I think one reason why there aren't many people in the IRC channel is because no one knows what IRC is. Could this part of the menu be changed to "Chatroom" to minimize the confusion? --Aristeo 13:20, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

Forum link

Could the forum link have a trailing / added to avoid a redirect and reduce loading time -- Lee Carré 23:00, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Done. --Aristeo | Talk 23:09, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Lovely, should reduce bandwidth a little :) -- Lee Carré 10:53, 28 November 2006 (EST)

Possible Changes

A few minor changes to consider:

• Remove the Old Site link. While I'll keep the old site up its essentially defunct now that everything is in the wiki (or should be).
• Move the Doncations link to the community section. I don't think it deserves to be in the top section as its not that important (more of an after thought).
• Possibility of adding a Links section containing a few important ES related links (we use to have this but it got lost at some point).
  • Elderscrolls.com
  • Official Forums
  • The Imperial Library (a great site for ES lore)
  • TesSource.net (or another mod site since we don't host any)

-- DaveH 11:19, 29 November 2006 (EST)

"Doncations" ? I assume you mean Donations?

I have nothing against the removal of the "old site" link, however, if this is done, there should be a thread in the forum about it, or at least a note somewhere, so it can still be found.

I'm in favour of adding a link to The Imperial Library, very useful resource, especially for books. -- Lee Carré 17:42, 29 November 2006 (EST)

I made the first two changes that you suggested, and a couple miscellaneous changes of my own. As for adding the "Links" back, I think instead we should set up some kind of affilate program with some of the bigger sites out there. Just a thought. --Aristeo | Talk 22:35, 29 November 2006 (EST)

Indenting Expansions

I have a small suggestion. I do like them indented now; however, I think it would be best to remove the bullet point for the expansions. It looks a tad cluttered with them to the left of everything. I think a basing indent would be better suited for them and for he appearance of the site. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 00:58, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

I'm not so sure. I just experimented with and without the bullets (on my test site). Without the bullets the expansions look really different from every other entry in the sidebar and stand out because they look so different. (For my own future reference, the CSS necessary to do it is .portlet ul ul {list-style-type: none; list-style-image: none;}). You might also want to make sure you're using the most up-to-date CSS files (ctrl-F5 in your browser) -- just so that we're both looking at the same layout. There are also a few strange things going on at the moment with the sidebar changes (content1 isn't recognizing the indents at all). --Nephele^Talk 01:59, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

I see that they aren't indented as far as they once were, and it looks a lot better. I also noticed the reverting back to the "no indent" version; I was correct in assuming the different servers were the culprit. My CSS files are up to date, so we are looking at the same thing (which looks really good now!). Nice update! --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 02:05, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

What....

And what it is necessary to make same Sidebar? --95.55.62.92 21:16, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean? --Timenn-<talk> 14:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Displacement of subparagraphs of the menu to the right. --95.28.189.226 03:57, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

They are indented, per design. The menu items link to game expansions, instead of full games. --Timenn-<talk> 10:16, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The identation of Shivering Isles and Tribunal might be a custom addition we made to the site although the latest version of MediaWiki might have it. Nephele would know for sure. -- Daveh 12:35, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

TES Travels and Elder Scrolls Online

Do we need to point out that these two games take place in the Elder Scrolls franchise? Every other page listed with them is related to the Elder Scrolls, do we need to signify that the Travel games and the MMO are part of the same franchise? --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 17:09, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Online should be left for now, until it becomes more widely known, to avoid any possible confusion with the early Skyrim rumors of possible online play. As Travels is the extra title for sub-games and not a game itself, I would leave it to make it different. The Silencer has spoken^Talk 17:50, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Addition of TES VI

Despite its announcement, would it be too early to create and add a TES VI page to the sidebar? --Rezalon (talk) 05:30, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

It should only be added to the sidebar if we have a namespace and main page. And I think it's too early to create either of those too. There is no information and not even a real title (like Skyrim) to use for the namespace. —Dillonn241 (talk) 05:33, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, we won't add it until its ACTUALLY announced, like name, release date, etc. Which won't be for years. :) Jeancey (talk) 05:39, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Order of TES Travels

Since the rest of the games are placed in order of release, would it not be appropriate to put TES Travels between Morrowind and Oblivion? --Rezalon (talk) 05:32, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

The sidebar is most importantly for navigation and since hardly anyone has access to these games, they should remain at the bottom. It's not very visually appealing either, though I admit that's a subjective argument. It just looks better to have the three major single player games—Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim—together. —Dillonn241 (talk) 05:42, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Https

All the outside links need changed to https now. Only a few have been haphazardly upgraded so far. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 14:39, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Done for those that support it. I opened all the external links in HTTPS mode and two of them redirected back to HTTP, so I left those two as they are. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 18:55, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Daveh will probably need to do something for the blog. The tumblr one appears to need a fix from the account side. In the account settings on tumblr there should be an option for "Always serve blog over SSL". Turn that on, fix the link back to the site displayed on the front page, and viola, https everywhere (but not quite yet). Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 20:04, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Small Change to Discord Links

Under the "community" section, there is currently a Discord link, which is in fact an invite link to the server, and a Chatroom link below all the social media icons that links to UESPWiki:Discord. While Discord is a chatroom, that term generally refers to something more like the IRC and having that link not next to the Discord link doesn't make much sense either. Therefore, I think it would be a good idea to remove Chatroom and add (info) after Discord like so:

• Discord (info)

—Dillonn241 (talk) 02:15, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Since no one responded, I was going to implement this change, but it seems like the sidebar has no support for multiple links. If anyone can think of another way to make these links more representative of what they are (and preferably together), reply to this topic. —Dillonn241 (talk) 11:36, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of that when I read it, but you're right. The sidebar is very primitive compared to regular wiki editing, and doesn't allow very much at all. Even the indents we've added to it required us re-writing some of the MediaWiki code. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 19:02, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Twitter Rename

I know it's not a popular rename by any means, but it feels wrong to be using the old Twitter logo and not mentioning X as its actual name. I propose we change the icon to the X logo and call the link "X/Twitter".

As a half-step, we can just do the link rename and leave the logo as is, but I don't think that option is as valid. —Dillonn241 (talk) 02:51, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I would go with X (Twitter) or Twitter (X), but otherwise yeah. --Enodoc (talk) 20:22, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Enodoc. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 20:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I will move forward with this change. —Dillonn241 (talk) 23:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Books/Merchandise order in sidebar

I noticed the very useful changes to the main page and sidebar today, and have one minor suggestion - could the "Books" and "Merchandise" links be moved up to just below "Lore", and the main page links slightly rearranged to match (from left to right: Lore-Books-Merch-General-Mods)? I know Books and Merch aren't likely as popular in terms of views, but that would put all the "meta"-type non-game content together at the top of the sidebar, followed by the mods and all the games themselves. Just a thought. --Mikeprichard (talk) 03:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point, and one that I meant to address. I would prefer to move General and Mods down, actually. The games themselves take priority over any meta info, especially namespaces like Merchandise. Lore should stay at the top because it's arguably our most "fundamental" namespace overall. —Dillonn241 (talk) 03:15, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I moved them down for now. I'm testing out line breaks with CSS, which makes the divisions clearer. You have "games and lore", "spinoffs", and "meta". —Dillonn241 (talk) 04:14, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

The changes look great to me - I always found the sidebar to be arranged in a very confusing way, and this is a huge help to navigation. A couple more suggestions you may already have in mind: adding another line break below "Lore", and rearranging the Skyrim and Oblivion sub-links for completeness and consistency. Specifically, for Skyrim, I think distinct sub-links for Dawnguard, Dragonborn, and Hearthfire should be (re-)added between "Skyrim" and "Add-ons". For Oblivion, I suggest a "Downloads" sub-link should be added at the end, similar to Skyrim's "Add-ons" sub-link, since especially for Oblivion there are quite a few of those "official downloads". Nice work! --Mikeprichard (talk) 15:20, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

My recommendation would be:

----
All
Lore
General
Mods
----
ESO
Skyrim
Oblivion
Morrowind
Daggerfall
Arena
----
Castles
Blades
Legends
Redguard
Battlespire
Travels
----
Call to Arms
Pinball
VSE
Books
Merchandise

This maintains the previous order of having General and Mods at the top, which was decided last year so that these two major content namespaces aren't buried below all the game links, and also groups all the subsidiary licensed products and merchandise together in one section at the bottom. I would also suggest that we get rid of all level 2 links at this point to save space; it's only one more click to go through either the individual pages or All Content, and I don't know how many people would use those links over the search box anyway for that sort of thing. --Enodoc (talk) 20:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Enodoc. Take out the level 2 DLC stuff entirely and follow those divisions as posted. I'd still like to keep the collapsible sidebar gadget since it has a use for condensing Spinoffs and adding sublinks to Travels. It also condenses Hosted Wikis further down the sidebar. I'll wait to see if anyone else wants to weigh in since the sidebar affects everyone. —Dillonn241 (talk) 23:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Done. I also edited the collapsible sidebar to be a more expansive gadget that effectively turns the sidebar into All Content. It works pretty well in my opinion to have these two clear levels of complexity. —Dillonn241 (talk) 12:03, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

(←) It seems I missed this discussion happening on this page earlier but I agree with Mikeprichard's suggestion of re-adding the sublinks to Skyrim's "Dawnguard", "Dragonborn", and "Add-ons", Oblivion's "Shivering Isles" and Downloads, and Morrowind's "Tribunal" and "Bloodmoon". It would also be helpful to at the very least re-add Chapters and DLC under ESO as their chapters can basically be games in-of-themselves and having an easy link to them would be better for reader navigation. I would also recommend re-adding Shadowkey as its own entry as it is a much bigger game than the other Travels games and should be displayed as such. Thanks The Rim of the Sky (talk) 20:31, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

I could get behind highlighting Shadowkey as an individual entry. After all, we have Skyrim VSE as a main entry. As for the DLC, the reasoning behind removing those was exactly because of how big the sidebar has become. The compromise is that if you want those links, enable the collapsible sidebar, which not only has those, but also has Hearthfire, all ESO chapters, all major modspaces, and both books.

I'm still in favor of the current layout, especially for future proofing against TES VI having expansions that would then need to be added as sublinks. The other consideration is that all of ESO's chapters are at least "Dawnguard"-sized expansions, so it's strange to list one game's expansions and not the other's as individual entries. —Dillonn241 (talk) 01:29, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point. I still haven't figured out how to enable the collapsible sidebar but I think it should be made the default (particularly for non-logged in users). As for future proofing against TES VI, I do think looking at things case-by-case would be more beneficial as a brand new expansion would generate a lot more traffic than a 30-year-old game and hence should be easier to quickly access The Rim of the Sky (talk) 06:18, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree with making the collapsible sidebar the default. It is as simple as editing MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition so that CollapsibleSidebar[ResourceLoader] becomes CollapsibleSidebar[ResourceLoader|default]. However, this huge change to how non-users view the site should go through the Community Portal.

I also agree that for the first two or three years after release, we can have TES VI expansions in the sidebar, probably as a top-level item. After that, though, they would become just like every other expansion. Maybe for now it's even worth adding the latest ESO Chapter until the next one comes out to replace it? —Dillonn241 (talk) 17:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)