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Hi everyone,

As you've all probably noticed a change in Halopedia's appearance and such since your last logon here, these are part of the promised changes we announced back in our domain change proposal.

New skin

The new skin, "Halopedia" as it is called, will now be the new default one for the site. As some of you older-timers know, this skin was used by Halopedia back in 2008; when Wikia introduced it along with some social features which included Polls, Quizzes and Blogs. While we haven't been able to bring back any of those (as we also proposed to get rid of the 2 former), or the originally planned "Monaco" skin, we have re-introduced the Halopedia skin so as to give our independent site a unique look from most other wikis so we can attract more visitors. We admittedly found that Monaco was more of a trouble to install due to some missing code parts, so we decided to look at a close but easier alternative to give everyone a look that may be little different, but still feels familiar to them.

The skin at this moment in time of my writing, is still a bit bland and plain; as we have yet to fix up its interface to bring back the beautiful mountain theme and other graphic features that were present with Monaco that we had back on wikia. Please note that we are currently still working on this, so bear with us. Updates will be posted as soon as they are in. Fixed and done.

We also understand that not everyone may take preference to this skin over the others that we have available. You can visit Special:Preferences → "Skin" to change your skin preference. As of this date, we offer "Halopedia" (our default), Monobook and Vector. For a bit more detail on this, Monobook is the previously default skin that most users were using until now, and Vector is Wikipedia's default skin. As it is, we plan to give Halopedia unique designs in each of these as time goes by. We apologize that this hasn't happened sooner, but as it is, maintenance and customization on each skin is not always a quick or simple process, are there is code that needs to be involved in the MediaWiki namespace, and finding that code is not always easy when you're unfamiliar with some of it, as each skin uses a different set of code for its customization.

"Patroller" right

Since the move, this wiki has introduced a new user right called "Patroller". This right gives a user whom it is assigned to some additional functions to the site, much like administrators, though on a lesser scale. The main tool of this right is to mark good quality page revisions as "patrolled", which makes them more easily identifiable for revert reasons (in cases of mass vandalism or poor quality edits).

The Patrollers group, like the administrators, is an all-volunteer though not requestable. Users are invited, and if they accept, assigned by the administration. Since the main purpose of the group is to mark high-quality page revisions, we look towards users who are active and have a record for high-quality editing to their name as good candidates. If you're one of these users, its more than likely you've been noticed. Like with administrators, candidates are selected on an as-needed basis.

Bug reports and future plans

The devs have been working and have mostly finished off fixing most of the reported bugs that were found by our users. There's probably a few minor tweaks left to be done, no issues there. We remind everyone that if you spot a software bug, please report it for review and fixing.

As stated above, we've now finished with the installation of the new skin, which we're proud to present to our community and visitors. We've mostly finished installing everything we need in terms of features or other software, so we now do not have any plans for anything much else. That said, we're still open to hearing opinions from our users if there is something that they wish to see present on the wiki. If you have a suggestion to bring up, please don't hesitate to contact us about it.

Regards,

- Nìcmávr ^(Tálk) 16:58, 4 November 2010 (EDT)

Comments

Feel free to post your questions, suggestions or comments below here

Brings back memories.... <3 - 5əb'7aŋk^(7alk) 17:08, 4 November 2010 (EDT)

Visually refreshing, I actually like the design — very nice and a bit more professional then the old stick a bunch of images in places that have no visual style or make a lot of sense. Durandal-217 17:44, 4 November 2010 (EDT)

It's Monaco without being Monaco...I positively live it. k4karnage 19:51, 4 November 2010 (EDT)

Although my favourite skin is still Wikia's Monaco, I love this one too. It is much better than the previous skins and reminds me old Halopedia. Nice choice. --^{Odysseas-Spartan}53 03:47, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

Love it, it's much more attractive now; Monobook gave me a depressed feeling, and Vector didn't have the Java stuff in the Navigation. However I think the "Quote of the Day" and all that should be improved - either shift the text to the left or make a design to fill the left side and make the formatting a little less bold. I also suggest that visited links should have a more distinguished colour from the unvisited links, particularly in the Main Page and the Did You Know's. Additionally, I can't find a place where I can access the Preferences page directly (as in, there is no link that goes to our Preferences page which used to be at the top right). Forgive me if any of these are in development. TuahA 04:15, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

When you're logged in, there are six links in the navigation bar, below "Related Sites". On the right side, there are "Recent changes", "Preferences" and "Special pages". --Jack Phoenix 07:16, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

Thanks for the info. Just another thing to add, I think the Did You Know on the left should be omitted from the Main Page, as there already is a Did You Know on the right. TuahA 10:47, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

I'm not really sure about ommitting it from the Main Page because that removes the feature entirely for those using Vector or Monobook as their skin choice. Both of the DYK's also spawn random and different facts each time, so there's no duplicates apart from the feature itself. - Nìcmávr ^(Tálk) 14:23, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

On some pages, the titles are shifted over to the right. Is it because of this?--The All-knowing Sith'ari 16:28, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

Sithari: Haven't heard of this on this skin before. Could you provide a screenshot so we can have a look? Thanks, - Nìcmávr ^(Tálk) 16:34, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

I love the new look! The only issue I have is that we don't have the blog function back, but really, we don't need it. That's what the forums are for. I'll miss the message box feature, rather than editing a comment section, but oh well. -- Specops306 ^{Autocrat Qur'a 'Morhek} 17:04, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

That may be what the forums are for, but compare the forums relative innactivity to the blogs comparative swarm of posts. Dragonblaze-052 19:01, 9 November 2010 (EST)

Ahh, Nicmavr, no mention of me harassing you to get this skin back? ;) Kougermasters 19:08, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

I know that this has been discussed a while ago but I really think we should bring the quiz and polls back, maybe with "Poll Administrators" to take the burden off of the Admins. Oh and I REALLY REALLY REALLY like the new skin. "Mike" 16:05, 14 November 2010 (EST)

The new skin is nice, no complaints about that, but I wish one feature was implemented to it. That is, the shortcut to the "what links here" special page. I've found it useful to have a direct link to the page, when changing redirects, links or such. The link could be put either to the sidebar or the tools at the bottom of each page, like it used to be in the Wikia Halopedia. --Jugus (Talk | Contribs) 05:57, 15 November 2010 (EST)

Its possible to install that into Mediawiki:Halopedia-sidebar, though personally I'd prefer it in the "TOOLBOX" extension (the area below the sidebar). Not sure how to edit that, but I'll look into it. - Nìcmávr ^(Tálk) 06:14, 15 November 2010 (EST)

I think we should remove Random Page and Help from the toolbox since they are already covered in the main sidebar, making the last two options What links here and Special pages. Thoughts? --Steve (talk) 17:25, 15 November 2010 (EST)

I don't know if it was left out on purpose, but I thought the "upload file" link was useful to have in the toolbox, especially if you have to upload more than one image at once. It's one of the shortcuts I've found the most useful in other skins. It may also be easier for some new users to have the link in the toolbox since everyone may not even know where to find it otherwise. --Jugus (Talk | Contribs) 07:18, 7 December 2010 (EST)