Comments on: Looking for wikis with well-designed front pages

Question: Looking for wikis with well-designed front pages

electric_counterpoint — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:27:22 -0800

I'm looking to revamp my organization's wiki. Have you seen a Mediawiki installation with a really well-designed front page?

Right now, our wiki's front page is just a selection of internal links in a few categories, making for a long, uninviting, single column wall 'o' letters. I'd like to class it up a bit, especially since it's public-facing with a high PageRank — users who landed on one of our deep pages via Google and clicked up to ../Main_Page would thus recognize that they're looking at a big, unified wiki resource.

Obviously, Wikipedia's front page is the gold standard for a Mediawiki homepage (or at least it's the most recognized). Of course, we don't have as much daily activity, so it wouldn't make sense for us to put as much dynamic content on the front page. I guess I'm just looking for examples of well-designed front pages that display a relatively stable introduction to the wiki's relatively stable content.

If it helps, we've got some "current events" pages, a lot of "how to's," an awful lot of entries for individual members of a particular group, and some administrivia like meeting minutes.

By: electric_counterpoint

electric_counterpoint — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:43:39 -0800

Of course, I'm amenable to general suggestions about what's good in Wiki design as well, though my first focus is on the front page.

By: crios

crios — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:14:34 -0800

I always liked WikiHow's front page but from what I understand they use a modded version of Mediawiki, so I don't know if it's possible to replicate their look and design without modding the Mediawiki installation.

By: yath

yath — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:45:30 -0800

Wikipedia's front page may be well-known, but it's very poor web design. Many of their Main Page Alternatives are much easier to look at and better-organized. Such as my favorite, Classic 2006.

By: falameufilho

falameufilho — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:01:48 -0800

Forum Nokia Wiki.

By: DarlingBri

DarlingBri — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:12:16 -0800

The short answer to your question is: No, I have never seen a wiki homepage that is not absolutely hideous.

Of the Wikipedia options, I think that Executive and Shade of Blue are the least objectionable but seriously, the whole thing gets eaten by its own navigation. That shit is ug-leeeeee.

This flabbergasts me. if I did not absolutely passionately hate wikis, I'd do something about it. I mean, it's HTML; it isn't voodoo. Surely it is possible to CSS and XHTML up a design that's, you know, actually designed and stick the wiki bits into it.

Right?

In any case, perhaps someone will come by and drop a link to The World's Greatest Looking Wiki and restore my faith in humanity.

By: escher

escher — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:15:33 -0800

I find Wikihack to be laid out pretty nice.

By: ArkhanJG

ArkhanJG — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:04:01 -0800

I nicked the design of wikipedia, and simplified it some for our support front page; it's actually a trac wiki, but I embedded the design using html because it was simpler than using entirely trac wiki syntax (which I could have done, but it doesn't change much). Maybe the simpler layout would be useful. Anyway.

By: electric_counterpoint

electric_counterpoint — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:34:11 -0800

Thinking more clearly the next morning, it occurred to me that the Mediawiki project itself would almost surely have a page for people to post their own installations, and many of those might have custom designs. Sure nuff.

Of course, unlike Wikimedia's stuff, most of these designs are copyright, so future browsers of this question, take heed.

By: DarlingBri

DarlingBri — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:20:06 -0800

AHA! I take it all back. This They Might Be Giants wiki is officially the best looking wiki skinning ever.