Talk:Main Page

This page is archived for the years 2009, 2013, 2020.

If I were launching finiki today, what should be considered and what would be key to success of the main page?

Some key concepts:

The wiki should be device independent, desktop, tablet and smartphones need to be considered
Above the fold still matters
Wikipedia is well known, we are not. Readers more than likely stumble upon us, whereas they intentionally go to Wikipedia.
Rightly or wrongly, our wiki and our forum are separate domains, so newcomers don't know the connection. We need to make that connection.
Current design trends seem to involve lots of whitespace, colour and other 'eye-candy', sometimes to the detriment of actual content. Simplicity seems to be "in".
First impressions matter and depend on many factors: structure, colors, spacing, symmetry, amount of text, fonts, and more. We have control of some of these.
The demographic of those finding and using the wiki might not necessarily line up with the demographic of admins/editors/contributors
Do it yourself investing and personal finance tends to wordy more than visual (images). But unfortunately our competition is deep pocket financial institutions that have huge marketing budgets.
My guess is many arrive readers via search engines directly on a specific article and then follow the wiki navigation tools (navbars, sidebars, search box) and may never visit the main page
If you Google enough, you can find design guides/statistics/research to support any preconceived notion and idea.

From a content point of view, our main page should include (in order of importance). I'm intentionally ignoring built-in MediaWiki elements such as the search box and the navigation sidebar.

Introduce ourselves and our wiki, what content can be found within
Highlight the key areas of the wiki, i.e. high level structure
Bring attention to what we think are the high profile, most important articles.
Entice the reader to stay and explore further
Make the connection to the discussion forum as a place to ask questions about what you've read and how to apply it in your circumstances

Some other works of interest are MediaWiki/Homepage improvements 2018 and Small wiki toolkits/Starter kit/Main page customization --Peculiar Investor 13:29, 8 January 2021 (MST)

2023 launch

Feedback is requested here (vs. updating the page directly). Proposed changes:

The box title "Getting started" should be a link to Getting started. Remove Personal finance, it detracts from drawing the reader's attention to the main point - start here.
Mention personal finance as a secondary point to investing.
Wording change "You'll be able to handle finances on your own" to "You'll be able to handle investments on your own"
The image is too large and detracts from the text. Scale it like the retirement image.
The same for the investing image (not shown here)

(Revised as discussed below. --LadyGeek 22:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC))

(Link to template styles CSS page revised to avoid error after Main Page went "live". --LadyGeek 21:44, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Getting started and personal finance

Working with finances and investments can be a baffling and humbling experience. You find it difficult too understand the material and are unable to distinguish good information from bad.

If you are looking for guidance, begin your journey with getting started.^* This article is the staring point to provide information in a simple and understandable format. You will be able to handle finances and investments on your own and at minimal cost.

Important personal finance topics include:

* Disponible en français: Prendre en main ses finances et commencer à investir

--LadyGeek 13:20, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Is there a reason the above text changes were not incorporated (first 3 of the bullet list)? I have corrected the formatting so the page displays as intended. --LadyGeek 00:14, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

The first bullet item was partially done, link added. Personal finance was left as I see it being a critical part of getting started. First you need to get your personal finances in order before you should give consideration to investing. That's also the explanation for point #2 and #3. I'm open to other viewpoints but FWF and the wiki is about both personal finance and investing and the focus should remain on both, as equally as possible. --Peculiar Investor 14:34, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

My perspective is that inexperienced readers will shy away from the term "finance". It's a term that results in fear of doing something difficult with math. I've seen this reaction in-person. So, remove all of the difficult words and make it easy.

"Getting started" on its own is newbie friendly. Introduce the phrase "personal finance" later in the section. Newbies may not understand what "personal finance" means, but they'll understand the introduced topics and continue reading. The relative importance of investing vs. personal finance is implied by the number of topics covered. --LadyGeek 15:11, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Wow! I cannot imagine someone not understanding the need to understand personal finance. Someone once said "The plural of anecdote is NOT data." My thinking is also tempered by SEO needs for our low volume wiki. The main page needs to have a certain amount of "keyword stuffing" for ranking reasons and therefore personal finance (and the category link) needs some level of priority, i.e. the <h2> tag. --Peculiar Investor 15:18, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

This person understands the need, but shies away from the term called "finance". I'm thinking this would be a typical newbie and I was trying to make the page more attractive. Another perspective is that SEO needs might be less important than attracting and retaining traffic to finiki. --LadyGeek 15:24, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Counterpoint, if the terminology and significance of where it is mentioned has the potential to scare away someone, then why is it a main subforum (third from top) on Bogleheads.org - Index page? Personal finance and investing are the two major themes that our sites cover. Most other themes (retirement, taxation, ...) flow from there. --Peculiar Investor 17:02, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Counter-counterpoint. Most readers do not assume a hierarchy on forum order. The FWF Board Index does not appear in a clean investing / personal finance order. Instead, take a look at the Bogleheads wiki home page. "Getting started" is the section heading.

We don't use the phrase "personal finance" as a main point. Instead, it's focused on topics important to the readers from a new investor perspective. They can relate to this and then learn the details when they're ready. Additionally, the Bogleheads wiki rotates topics of interest (for new investors) as well as providing a "This week in financial history" as a way to retain readers. This was done intentionally to mirror Wikipedia - which also rotates content daily. --LadyGeek 19:53, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't see "personal finance" as intimitating for newbies. We already have "financial" in the name of our forum.--Quebec 20:40, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

The user page asks, at the top, "Almost ready as an update to Main Page?"; after review, I say yes, go for it.--Quebec 20:46, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

The Bogleheads forum does not have "financial" in its name. If there are no further comments, I also agree to "go for it". --LadyGeek 21:48, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Upon further review, Wikipedia uses a colour theme based on the box's location, not content. In addition to the header CSS, the 5 colour styles (gray is a colour) in Template:User:Peculiar Investor/Main page 2023/styles.css are #mp-left, #mp-right , #mp-middle, #mp-lower, #mp-bottom

When they have content needing four colours, they use left, right, lower, then bottom. Five colors use left, right, middle, lower, then bottom.

Wikipedia implements the main page in a way that can't be tracked like content pages. Instead, they maintain daily snapshots which can be found in the Wikipedia:Main Page history (Snapshots of the Main Page).

Five colours are used here: Wikipedia:Main Page history/2023 January 23. I have aligned the draft page to this colour theme. --LadyGeek 00:09, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Would there be any interest to generate dynamic content similar to what's used on the Boglehead wiki's home page? "Featured articles" shows helpful introductory articles that are rotated on a daily basis. It's a good way to attract new investors and retain readers. You can easily implement it by modifying what's done in Bogleheads:Featured article with 10 finiki articles (and a concise summary). This feature is prominently displayed on the proposed new home page User:LadyGeek/Main page 2023. This was done in order to emulate Wikipedia - dynamic content attracts more readers than a static page. --LadyGeek 01:51, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I recommend protecting the newly imported finiki:Main Page/styles.css. --LadyGeek 16:21, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks

Done --Peculiar Investor 16:48, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Image sizes and consistency

In a previous comment LadyGeek stated "The image is too large and detracts from the text. Scale it like the retirement image." This was addressed in the revision Set the images to have a consistent height using the x150px parameter to see the image height consistently at 150px. Due to different image sources, the images widths are different. The images should probably be scaled consistently by either width or height. On this particular page I thought scaling with consistent height was appropriate as there are two columns (desktop view) that start begin with images. This aligns the top and bottom of the images.

I suspect the submit comment was missed and I probably should have addressed LadyGeek's comment directly via a comment on this page.

Looking for guidance on which sizing looks better in light of the above information. --Peculiar Investor 15:13, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

I reduced the size of the "Get started" image a bit yesterday based on LadyGeek's comment + my own gut feeling that agreed it was too large. We have 3 images to deal with, with different aspect ratios (e.g., height:width), so a general "rule" about sizing can't line things up perfectly in all directions. If I had to quantify my gut feeling, I would say we should aim for each image to be about the same surface area. But I'm not a graphic designer, so feel free to undo my change.--Quebec 15:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Understood. Nor am I a graphic designer, so other feedback is helpful and considered. I felt it might be helpful to explain how I addressed LadyGeek's comment and reasoning. As always feedback, suggestions and/or edits are welcomed. --Peculiar Investor 15:56, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

You should scale for height, as mobile devices will want to conserve vertical space. The width of the image (at these sizes) should easily fit inside the display border. It looks OK on my Android. Try going smaller, perhaps x110px. The images are tending to draw attention away from the text. --LadyGeek 15:59, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

The x150px looked fine on my iPhone/iPad Pro and desktop but I appreciate the concern raised. Therefore the height has been reduced to x125px to further test. On an iPhone (via browser inspection) reports

    width: 263px;
    aspect-ratio: auto 263 / 125;
    height: 125px;

For reference, the current Main Page Getting started image on an iPhone (via browser inspection) reports

    width: 150px;
    aspect-ratio: auto 150 / 71;
    height: 71px;
}

--Peculiar Investor 18:09, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The Getting started file is still too large due to the relatively large size of the text blocks compared to the description. Reduce the image size until the block letters are approximately the size of the text. I have revised my proposed changes (above) to change the dimension to x100px. --LadyGeek 22:06, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

I have done further investigation/research on how the images on Wikipedia's Main Page are sized and shown. Wikipedia uses Template:Main page image and a number of "wrapper" templates, i.e. Template:Main page image/TFA. As a minimum we should probably be guided by their implementation on sizing, location (left or right) and text wrapping. I am currently digging deeper on the effort involved in locating all the various Main page image/* templates and bring them aboard on finiki to be used. Stay tuned. --Peculiar Investor 14:24, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Tweaked it again to try to achieve the Wikipedia Main Page look without resorting to using their templates. Switched to width based sizing and also allowing text to wrap around the image. Looks good on my desktop, iPad and iPhone. --Peculiar Investor 18:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia's Manual of Style/Images (How_to_place_an_image). I suggest right-side location and experimenting with the upright=scaling factor. Additional details are in Wikipedia:Image_use_policy (Displayed_image_size). --LadyGeek 18:43, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Giving them a read. However notice that Wikipedia's Main Page seems to violate their own rules in the Today's featured article section. I also found at least one other wiki's Main Page that doesn't follow the rule. 🤣--Peculiar Investor 18:59, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

French speaker readers and native language content

finiki is lacking in French language content. User:Quebec's efforts on Équivalents en français and Prendre en main ses finances et commencer à investir are definitely helpful and a good starting point.

I am trying to best figure out how to incorporate these into the new page. Quebec has added Notre porte d'entrée en français : Prendre en main ses finances et commencer à investir at the bottom of the Getting started section, but it seems out of place and inconsistent with the rest of the page. Is there a better method or place on the Main Page to make sure we have at least some French language content?--Peculiar Investor 20:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Prendre en main ses finances et commencer à investir is a translation of Getting started. This is why it is mentioned in the "Getting started" box. Also, moving it to the bottom of the main page would make it less visible. I will attempt a slight improvement.-Quebec 20:51, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I understand the original placement in the Getting started section and am trying to figure out the best way of incorporation without having to admit that for the most part we (finiki and FWF) are unfortunately unilingual. --Peculiar Investor 21:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Have a look at what I just did. Note that the current time is 16:08, not 21:08--Quebec 21:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

How about just providing a choice, which should be obvious based on the reader's language. As to timestamps, notice the (UTC) at the end. Talk timestamps are not local time zone (anymore). --Peculiar Investor 21:20, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The offering of a choice is very difficult to read. S.V.P. voir ma proposition de mise à jour ci-dessus. Veuillez modifier comme vous préférez --LadyGeek 22:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

"The offering of a choice is very difficult to read" - indeed. The orange text was ugly, but we have maybe 10-20 seconds for the unilingual francophone (or bilingual but not for finance stuff) reader to discover that there is something in French in finiki. In previous versions of wikipedia, there was a list of available languages I think in the left side menu, but that's gone. Now there is only a symbol (asian character + A) in the upper right area. That (the upper right corner) is actually a good place for the language choice, most Canadian banks have it up there, as well as Hydro Quebec, Air Canada, Rogers, Telus, Bell, etc. Could we have a "Français" button in the upper right? That would lead to a French version of the main page, with a warning box at the top (of that French version) that except for a couple of articles, the content is actually in English for the time being. The would be an English button at the top of the French version, if a reader wants to switch back. If that's too much wortk, LG's version looks OK--Quebec 00:15, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I have updated the proposed example just before you were providing your comment. I have modified the wording to be similar to your main page draft as "* Disponible en français: Prendre en main ses finances et commencer à investir". I think it is a better version.

To emphasize the point, mixing two languages within the same paragraph should be removed. I don't think the new page can be released with this wording.

Quebec - I see a button "FR" in the top-right corner of Bank of Canada. I only see choices of Français / English (menu links, not a graphic button) for Hydro-Québec. If it is a lot of work to translate the main page, the translation can be performed after Peculiar_Investor updates the main page (work on the wiki is never done). --LadyGeek 00:43, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ This becomes a much bigger challenge and I went off looking for guidance. I found Multilingual MediaWiki (unfortunately marked Obsolete). It does however contain useful information and guidance should we want to undertake a bigger effort here.

As to the comment about "previous versions of wikipedia, there was a list of available languages I think in the left side menu" that is still technically possible. Through our configuration we only support the English language, thus the MediaWiki language choice(s) disappear from the interface.

Back to the existing issue, on the existing Main Page there is no mention of French language page(s) and only the sidebar has a link for Équivalents en français.

As part of the redesign it does make sense to me to offer whatever small amount of French language content to our readership. My inclination is still towards making it flow within the context of the existing sections. Using coloured formatting or a pseudo footnote just seems out of place to me and not very friendly to a French speaking reader. Unfortunately at this point I do not have a better solution to offer either. Definitely still thinking about it though. I can also ask for feedback from my spouse who is bilingual with French as their first language. My French is limited to high school level and very rusty. --Peculiar Investor 00:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I encourage everyone involved to edit the User page rather than making edits within this page. That's the whole purpose of the User page. --Peculiar Investor 20:04, 18 January 2023

First, I have added your signature using the timestamp in the page revision history. Next, I have updated the User page with my proposed version. Based on an earlier template comment, I had assumed that changes were intended to be proposed in the Talk page.

Please show the latest version to your spouse. “The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” (quote by Carl von Clausewitz) I think it is "good enough" to release.

Perhaps we could have a top-right corner template "Disponible en français" on pages where French is available and "Available in English" for the French pages? We can create a new category "Bilingual" or similar.

Please consider mobile devices for anything related to a left-side menu. Currently no links are displayed. Consider adding Getting started, Prendre en main ses finances et commencer à investir, and Équivalents en français to the mobile menu. Prendre en main ses finances et commencer à investir can be shortened to "Commencer à investir". The Bogleheads wiki has links in the mobile menu. See: MediaWiki:Mobile.js. --LadyGeek 01:19, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Still pondering how to replace the pseudo footnote. How about just having a standalone paragraph that directly addresses the issue.

Le wiki dispose d'un nombre limité d'articles en français. Veuillez commencer par Prendre en main ses finances et commencer à investir

Source: Translation of The wiki has a limited number of articles in French. Please begin with ...

--Peculiar Investor 18:09, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Bumping for final review. The plan is for page to give live on February 14th, finiki's "birthday". I changed the implementation one last time (I hope) to add a wiki section and tweaked one word as my spouse did not really like the word dispose and preferred contient --Peculiar Investor 14:25, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia colours and layout

Starting a new topic that follows on from here. My take is Wikipedia uses a colour theme based on the box's location and content.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia appears to use the following #mp-left, #mp-right , #mp-middle, #mp-lower, #mp-bottom mappings:

Wikipedia `#mp-*` mappings
Code	Sections	Wikipedia use
`#mp-left`	2	From today's featured article and Did you know ...
`#mp-right`	2	In the news and On this day
`#mp-middle`	1	From today's featured list
`#mp-lower`	1	Today's featured picture
`#mp-bottom`	2	Other areas of Wikipedia and Wikipedia's sister projects

finiki

When I initially laid things out for finiki I mapped them as:

finiki `#mp-*` mappings
Code	Sections	finiki use
`#mp-left`	2	Getting started and Investing
`#mp-right`	2	Retirement planning AND Still looking for answers or have a question?
`#mp-middle`	1	TBD
`#mp-lower`	1	TBD
`#mp-bottom`	2	Other areas of the wiki, i.e. Navigation on finiki and Sister projects

We need to put the About the wiki section somewhere. One could argue it is part of the #mp-bottom section, but one of the goals was to introduce images and colours, so perhaps #mp-middle and therefore equivalent to Wikipedia's From today's featured list works.

Dynamic content of a Feature article

As to the question raised "interest to generate dynamic content similar to what's used on the Boglehead wiki's home page? "Featured articles" shows helpful introductory articles that are rotated on a daily basis. It's a good way to attract new investors and retain readers."

What metrics support this viewpoint?
Given the current 278 articles here and the fact that many are already linked in the #mp-left and #mp-right sections. Creating a Featured Article section would would likely lead to significant duplication at this point in finiki's life. If/when there is significantly more content then maybe it could be revisited.

--Peculiar Investor 12:18, 24 January 2023‎ (UTC) (added missing signature per page revision history and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines --LadyGeek 00:46, 25 January 2023 (UTC))

Table updates

The full colour theme should include the banner.

Wikipedia appears to use the following #mp-topbanner, #mp-left, #mp-right , #mp-middle, #mp-lower, #mp-bottom mappings:

Wikipedia `#mp-*` mappings
Code	Sections	Wikipedia use
`#mp-topbanner`	1	Welcome to Wikipedia
`#mp-left`	2	From today's featured article and Did you know ...
`#mp-right`	2	In the news and On this day
`#mp-middle`	1	From today's featured list
`#mp-lower`	1	Today's featured picture
`#mp-bottom`	2	Other areas of Wikipedia and Wikipedia's sister projects

finiki's table should be:

finiki `#mp-*` mappings
Code	Sections	finiki use
`#mp-topbanner`	1	Welcome to finiki
`#mp-left`	2	Getting started and Investing
`#mp-right`	2	Retirement planning AND Still looking for answers or have a question?
`#mp-middle`	1	TBD
`#mp-lower`	1	TBD
`#mp-bottom`	2	Other areas of the wiki, i.e. Navigation on finiki and Sister projects

--LadyGeek 00:46, 25 January 2023 (UTC)