Board Thread:Community Engagement/@comment-5175866-20170322193545

We need some feedback for redesigning our background and mainpage. It would be helpful if we could get a specific answer in each of the following areas:


 * Should we switch to another classical painting, add a semi/photorealistic scroll or tablet or remove the background image entirely? Classical painting would need to be one clearly recongizable (such as a portion from the sistine chapel or a widely recongized/easily identifiable painting and scene); large amount of options, but there are concerns for inaccuracy (especially Europeanizing biblical people). A photorealistic image would either be the same image repeated on each side of the content-area (would be a sliver from a scroll repeated on each side) or a very large image with the only visible areas the outer borders.


 * Should the current order of the right-column on the mainpage be changed? Should certain sections be placed above others, should we remove some text from the side, should there be additional sections or more images?


 * Should the main area of the main page (not the right column) be changed? We have already made several minor changes but is there anything that should be added, removed or are there specific ideas on how to incorporate more images and less text.

We have already made several small design changes by removing the centered links (About, BPOV, etc), removing the Featured Article section and reducing the amount of words in blogposts by 200 words each. This reduces the amount of words in blogpost featuring by 800 words.

Changes we have planned are:


 * Update the navigation images (Persons, Places, Books) and put the new ones in a gallery format, possibly increase the amount of images.


 * Removing the "Welcome to Bible Wiki" heading bar


 * Adding Study and Write graphics on the mainpage. They could be side-by-side or put in respective sections (we need feedback).

There are also other ideas we could such as adding an Edit feed, adding a Forum feed or somehow improving the "Bible Events" section (which could do a lot of good). Some additional suggestions given to use by the Staff of Wikia, Inc are found here

Give your feedback on the specific questions and ideas I had for the mainpage and give any suggestions to our background design and main page. The primary goal is to increase the likelihood that someone will become an engaged member of the community by looking at the mainpage. The best mainpages usually have far more graphical content than textual content. We need to reduce the amount of text areas we have on the mainpage and place more graphics. We also need to have a better way to promote Writing and Studying about the Word of God (as is our motto) by the main page and maybe a way to highlight content. We should make sure the design is not overtly dependent on the Wikia network or features they specifically provided. Keep in mind we need low-maitenance solutions as I do not have the time, resources, or willingness to do that. I and SouthWriter, and our small community needs to focus on writing content.

In Christ,

Superdadsuper, Bible Wiki Administator & Bureaucrat 