MediaWiki talk:Community Portal/Archive35

Asking for permission to post links

I'm the current Bureaucrat at Ghostbusters Wiki, and there was interest in placing links to articles on this wiki to Ghostbusters wiki articles, and likewise placing links on Ghostbusters wiki to articles relating to content which has been brought up. I don't know a great deal of your wikis past dealings, other than wikia apparently kept your old wiki's content when you moved. Anyways, the wiki would rather reference to your present wiki than the one currently at wikia. We are hoping you wouldn't mind the links to our characters on pages related to the Race with the Devil article. Devilmanozzy 02:10, June 8, 2009 (EDT)

Can you give a few examples of articles on your wiki which would benefit from having links to this site? --abates 03:37, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

IIRC it's whatshername's assistants-- the ones from the Earthforce story (Running with the Devil?) that Wildman based on the RGB models.

(I personally have no problem with the links. Though I think this guy added 'em once, misformatted, and they got reverted.) -Derik 13:06, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

That wasn't Nozzy but Liberal Noob, while not logged in. I told the original guy to take a step back and mind their P's and Q's before we start crosslinking, especially since it was an anonymous IP at the time. But yeah, he wants to crosslink with Race the Devil and Susan Hoffman.--Rosicrucian^Talk 13:43, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Only direct link between the Ghostbusters Cartoon and the G1 Transformers cartoon is Frank Welker sounded like one of his TF roles when he voiced a ghost from time to time. I a am sorry for my wanton linking and it will not happen again. --Liberal Noob 22:57, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

I meant which pages on the Ghostbusters wiki would benefit from having links on them to our wiki. I'm curious, because I regard myself as reasonably familiar with Ghostbusters, and I can't think offhand of any references to Transformers in it. Perhaps in one of the cartoons? --abates 16:55, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Thanks for the replies on this matter. A good user Liberal Noob had requested that I would more address this, apparently the mod needed to say something and form a partnership in order to have links posted related to one anothers material. To answer the question of what articles would be hyperlinked, I believe he was planning on linking to the animated pages for Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, and Ray Stantz. Thats what I understand is being requested to being linked to.Devilmanozzy 19:42, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

We're not wondering which pages on our wiki would link to your wiki. We were wondering which pages on your wiki would need to link to our wiki. We didn't know there were any Transformers references in any Ghostbusters media, and thus didn't know you'd need to link to us from your wiki. --Jeysie 19:59, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Race with the Devil, Susan Hoffman, Starscream's Ghost, Horri-Bull, and a few others. Links will be on is a article on Ghostbusters Cameos. Note I believe that the section will be better built soon.Devilmanozzy 20:21, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Seems like there's a few other connections in terms of voice actors (Tara Strong, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche etc) as well. I think linking between the two sites is a good idea. --abates 23:37, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Yeah I had noticed that too as I looked around here the last few days. Never knew how much Ghostbusters and Transformers had in common.Devilmanozzy 23:40, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

While I'm broadly in favour of this, could you maybe change "Starscream's Ghost" to "Starscream's ghost" - I understand you want to keep the ghost theme going but the first is a link to an unrelated episode of the cartoon series, rather than the character himself. --Emvee 07:02, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

OK Emvee, I fixed the link on the Ghostbusters wiki as you requested. Devilmanozzy, Star Wars also has a lot in common with Transformers. --Liberal Noob 14:52, 11 June 2009 (EDT)

We know, we got named an official friend of Wookiepedia about a week into the Project: Bookworm Crash. If we hadn't been scrambling to pick up the pieces, our pages would probably reflect this more. (I assume we'll integrate more when Clone Wars starts up again, since we love to attention-whore ourselves that way.) -Derik 23:56, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

Here is an obscure crossover from The Real Effing Deal. - Starfield 00:09, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Quick Links?

You know, now that I think about it, one thing Wikia actually did do right was having some "Quick Links" on the sidebar. I find myself missing being able to quickly get to the main continuities/series without having to search or click to the Main Page first. (Especially now that there's lots o' ROTF toys to keep tabs on...)

Nothing extensive necessary; just one linkie thingy with a fly-out menu for our six main continuities and the full series list would probably work nicely. --Jeysie 03:03, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

I think notably M.Sipher *really* hated that because any time a cursor went within a parsec of the menu, it would pop out in an annoying manner. --FFN 04:09, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Wasn't just Sipher - it drove me nuts too. - SanityOrMadness 09:09, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Well, in that case, maybe just an extra sidemenu then, kind of like the "Campaign Navigation" box on this sidebar? I just figured that a fly-out menu would save space, but an extra link sidebar would work for me too.

But I'd definitely like something. As Abates points out below, we don't currently have any sidebar links for actually browsing. --Jeysie 12:47, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Could we make so that they're fly-out menus, but that they only fly-out if you actually click on the title? That would save room while avoiding things jumping out when you're waving the cursor around. --abates 22:11, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

I think having a link on the sidebar for Revenge of the Fallen would be good too. While the Community portal and Recent Changes links are great for us Editors, they're not likely to be used much by casual visitors. We should be using the menu to draw attention to major articles. While I'm thinking about it, we could probably change the Main Page link to read "Transformers Wiki"... --abates 04:11, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Would anyone object if I went ahead and popped a link to Revenge of the Fallen in the navigation menu? I'm thinking between "Main Page" and "Community portal". --abates 18:44, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

I'm not of the upper brass but given the increasing coverage of ROTF as we come down the wire, it'd make the most sense. --Lonegamer78 19:00, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

We need a new adspace

The TFwiki on our new server is doing super mega amounts of bandwidth! (Note I've broken up the OPtimus Prime (G1) page, because, dude, that thing was a monster.) So, uh, I think we need to add a new adspace. One that's *above* the fold, since the ones we have are shoved down in the corner where no one can see them. What advertiser would want to dump loads of money on those? What I'm proposing is a 486x60 banner-shaped ad up above the "article/discussion/edit/history/delete/move/watch" links, nestled in between the Teletraan 1 image and the personal toolbar. (You know, OUTSIDE of the content.) If this is a terrible idea, I will also accept $5 donations. --ItsWalky 11:14, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

I've no qualms with that. That was one of the "acceptable" adspaces, if I recall from the old discussions.--Rosicrucian^Talk 11:18, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Long as they don't dance or talk or sing, that'll work. Are we actively pursuing advertisers these days? -- Repowers 11:22, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Well, "actively pursuing advertisers" is somewhat incompatible with our current ad setup. To put an ad on our site now, that requires signing up with Project Wonderful and bidding. This is good for us because it's mostly automated. If we were to set up a "real" in the traditional sense, we'd need a full-time ad pursuer to fill those spots. The best we can do in our current situation is to try to convince Big Bad Toy Store and its ilk to sign up for Project Wonderful. --ItsWalky 11:33, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

IIRC, above-the-article is what we wanted Wikia to switch back to. I have no objection. -Derik 12:20, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Works for me. How does Ant handle TFU.info's advertising? Hooper_X 12:35, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Doesn't bother me... but can we either put it under the personal bar, or somehow make it so the personal bar would wrap? Otherwise, I'm staring at the top of my screen and realizing that I'd have an annoying horizontal scroll bar afterwards whenever I'm logged in.

I have to admit I'm kind of befuddled that we're apparently doing so much more traffic after the move than we were before, to the point of having all those initial problems because we weren't expecting it. Did the new server somehow improve our traffic, it is sheer coincidence that traffic increased for other reasons, or was it more like the old server wasn't keeping track of bandwidth or anything, so we had no idea how we were actually doing? --Jeysie 12:38, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Hosting with Bookworm was cheap. I mean, he was doing it at-cost. Or would have, if he ever invoiced us. Now that we've moved on, we're purchasing hosting from people who actually want to make money off us. --ItsWalky 12:41, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Well, the money's part of it, but I was also thinking about how most of our initial operational troubles seemed to stem from having more traffic to deal with than we realized we were going to have, to the point of even having to run a caching setup I'm guessing we weren't running on the old server. --Jeysie 12:45, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

The way Bookworm had his servers set up, it was difficult for him to separate out what was our traffic versus what was other traffic on the same server. He gave us an estimate which turned out to be wrong. --ItsWalky 12:55, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Aah, OK. Wasn't sure if it was something we needed to worry about or not. --Jeysie 13:29, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

I was kinda expecting this :( I'm cool with more banners, and I think you should beg us for money now and then. We may be able to help when we can. --FFN 13:15, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Caching is what most mediawiki installations do. We happened to start off on the most resource-intensive wiki software imaginable, and any stats from Bookworm were not only inaccurate based on whatever he was doing in the logs, but also because back then, the wiki was constantly crashing. You get zero hits per hour when it's down, and no stats in the world would help clear that up. I'm still tweaking the hit stats, and it'll be at least a week before I can start extrapolating growth numbers, but suffice it to say, we're going to go over our current bandwidth limit before the month is out, and while we won't get shut down, we will get billed for overages. Think of it like a normal cellphone plan instead of a pre-paid one. --McFly 11:47, 12 June 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, that's mainly what I thought Walky meant. Nestled between the personal bar and the article tabs seems like fertile ground for a banner ad.--Rosicrucian^Talk 13:39, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

I've got the ad code ready to go, whenever we can edit the CSS or whatever to make room. Here is our awesome new placeholder "please bid here" graphic: [1] --ItsWalky 13:48, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

Looks good so far. Potentially odd question: are these particular dimensions popular with Project Wonderful?--Rosicrucian^Talk 15:55, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

The Leaderboard (700ishx90) and the Big Box (300x250) are the most popular sizes, but those would really ugly up our page. --ItsWalky 15:58, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

And now it has its first client! That was fast.--Rosicrucian^Talk 01:52, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

Ahhh, Dreamland Chronicles is awesome. I spent a week a few months back reading through their archives after following an ad on our sidebar. --abates 02:20, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

One interesting thing looking at the Project Wonderful stats is that our ad hits are stabilizing now, and they're stabilizing fairly high relative to where they were when the site was still spotty. That's got to look good for advertisers, and if the site holds up to the abuse that the film debut is going to subject it to that's only beneficial to us in the end.--Rosicrucian^Talk 02:48, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

This = bad

Uh, I'm using Monobook, and as a result of this, the watchlist/preferences/etc bar has somehow ended up at the bottom of the page, just above the About Transformers Wiki/Powered by MediaWiki/etc... - SanityOrMadness 10:36, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

I got that on a couple of pages, too, and alt+F5ing didn't work. How I fixed it was I signed out and viewed those same pages as an anon. The userbar went back to where it should be, and it stayed there when I logged in again. - Magnus Maximus 10:49, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

Tried that, didn't work.

In fact, it's worse than I thought, because I didn't notice at first that the page/discussion/edit tabs have gone wandering too, and are floating around the place (the "discussion" and "edit" tabs are currently in the middle of this edit box, and I can't see the others anywhere). - SanityOrMadness 10:58, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

THE PROBLEM IS IN common.css.

The following CSS borks monobook. This is why you should use the specific stylesheets for each skin, NOT the common file:

#p-personal {
   position: relative;
}
 

#p-personal .pBody {
   float: right;
}

#p-cactions {
   position: relative;
}

#content {
   margin-top: 16px !important;
   position: relative;
}

-SanityOrMadness 11:30, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

The new ad space at the top of the page, which was fine yesterday, is now looking screwy in Firefox, with the ad behind the top of the Autobot symbol in the logo and the tabs at the top of the bar. Like so:

--KilMichaelMcC 16:43, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

Works fine for me in 3.0.10 and 3.5b99, both after clearing cache.--Rosicrucian^Talk 16:47, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

I made some CSS modifications in response to SanityOrMadness's issue, which may cache improperly. Try a hard refresh/clearing your cache. --Suki Brits 16:51, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

Okay, clearing my cache fixed it. --KilMichaelMcC 20:19, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

Is it working?

So, between the new banner and our ad display stats in general being much better since the server stabilized, does this mean that we're taking in what we need to?--Rosicrucian^Talk 14:57, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

I think so! We're averaging about $5 a day, which means $150 a month. Our hosting is... $80-ish? But how much of that $150 we'll have to spend a month remains to be seen, since we're going to be doing a lot more than our monthly allotted bandwidth. And there's a movie yet to premiere! So, uh, we'll have a better idea once the month is over. --ItsWalky 15:00, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

An update, while I'm skimming this page. We had to pay $80 in bandwidth overage fees, so the bill for June was $160. We're basically covering our rent now, assuming things keep at their current speeds. --ItsWalky 10:50, 8 July 2009 (EDT)

Assuming we ever end up with more money than we need, David, I suggest you cover yourself in gold. 14 caret gold. --FFN 16:42, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

If anyone's getting covered in gold, it's McFly and Scout! --ItsWalky 16:51, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, but I can actually imagine you as the World's Biggest Man, resplendent in gold and jewels, laughing maniacally. --FFN 03:28, 20 June 2009 (EDT)

I second McFly and Scout being covered in gold. Also what rate are we paying for extra bandwidth? --abates 04:42, 20 June 2009 (EDT)

I would prefer to be draped in gold, personally. If you can arrange that, it'd be swell, thanks! (Covered in gold is more of a Bond villain thing to do, after all.) As for the bandwidth rates, we're paying for a 1024MB Slicehost installation. Feel free to look it up, I'm not comfortable spilling numbers all over here. --McFly 10:36, 25 June 2009 (EDT)