User blog:JoshuaJSlone/Wiki Business: Namespaces, Favicon

Namespaces
If you're not familiar with namespaces, they're like the different categories of page/file a wiki can have. Other than the default Main namespace, you'll recognize pages that begin with things like User:, File:, Category:, Template:. All different namespaces which the system knows to treat in different ways. Also, and importantly, Forum:. Increasingly over the last year the Forum namespace has been taken over by pages that have been deemed worthy to be around in some form, but not as main pages. However, it has come to my attention that on Wikia it is possible to request a limited number of custom namespaces.

One advantage of doing this would simply be that it would seem a less hacky-seemimg solution than taking over a namespace meant for another purpose. Another would be that it would allow the Forum to return to its original purpose, rather than this secondary purpose being dominant. It would also allow us to eventually use the newer style Wikia forums if we wanted--right now I'm not sure what would happen to everything in Forum: if we were to do so.

Something to keep in mind from the page I linked to above is "If you want to request more than one custom namespace (you can ask for a maximum of three), please request them all at once rather than on three separate occasions". Since it's pretty much a one-shot upgrade, blowing it on one addition and later wishing we'd used the two others would be a Bad Thing. If it were possible to do twenty I'm sure we could think of ways to use most of them, but being limited I'm not sure what the obvious top three is. One would be for these side pages (Side:? Sub:? Minor:? Tangent:? NotQuite:? I don't know). Gallery is listed as a common custom namespace, which might not be a bad pick. What do you think?

Favicon
This is actually something I first brought up a long time ago, but nobody seemed very interested. Later Riyu-Hime brought it up, too, so when we both became admins I brought it up again with her. The thought was we'd present some ideas and see what people thought, and if still we were the only ones interested, we ourselves could pick something. Never got that far before Riyu-Hime went on hiatus, though.

The favicon is just another bit of site personalization, a little icon used to identify a site in various places. Commonly in a browser bar by the page title, but also often saved alongside bookmarks or in search bars. As is, H!P wiki has always used Wikia's default that looks something like  [ ] . Since people seem pretty used to it, the two suggestions I came up with a few months ago tried to keep some familiar design aspects, in terms of color, size, simple thick lines, and in one case sharp edges. Certainly no reason any of those things are necessary, but they're what I've got at the moment. Default Wikia favicon, blocky H!P, [http://joshuajamesslone.name/temp/20131202hplogoblue16.png dark blue old Hello! Project logo].