"It's gone, it's done"(well not exactly)
Yes, it's that time of the month again. I hope it brings some excitement to people because it sure does to me when I click that "Post" button. It is always with anticipation that I check my e-mails seeing the news updates on the wiki and seeing it build itself slowly but surely. However, today is even more special, it isn't your average run of the mill update, and I have so much stuff to get through so let’s get started:
-
Angmar: of course, with the release RuudDevil's video on Angmar we were excited to start writing about it. We realized however that this would be all from the Beta but decided that it was probable enough that most things would not change or would change very little. With that in mind, we have officially finished the faction page for Angmar, which allows for a quick overview of the Angmar faction in all its glory. We will however abstain ourselves from adding the remaining pages, once the patch is out, since a lot can change between the release and the final version. We decided that we would go on finishing the other factions, which are more "settled"
-Animated Icon: With a couple lines of code in the Wikia.css page, I was able to animate the "Edain Mod Wiki" word art at the top left of every page. Nothing fancy though but I will be experimenting with more stuff to see how it works.
- Sons of Durin Submod: We have added the basic page for the entire submod along with two personalized feeds for "Through Fire" news and "Through Blood" news. We are very impatient for any news update.
-Web Search Placement: with all the adding stuff, it has been nice to see the wiki rise in the SOE placement. I am proud to say that looking up "Edain wiki" places us second, an honorable achievement considering that the "Edain" are an important part of the Tolkien Universe. "Edain mod wiki" places us first with the German counter-part second and the old main page (2.0) third. Looking up any unit with the edain prefix leads directly to the page and unique units such as "morgul archers" will lead you directly to the appropriate wiki page.
-I've spoiled it in the paragraph above but here we go:
Main Page 3.0. This main page is even more user-friendly with almost as many pictures as words. Along with that, there are monthly "featured article", “featured quote” and "featured image". It is most probably the definitive version until I get some advanced wikia code knowledge that will allow more advanced version. Since this is the definitive edition, I’ve changed the name of the page to “Edain Mod Wiki” to allow its search to be easier. This also means that I have changed the links on the OP but I haven't made any other changes to it.
-*puts on party hat* It has been done!!!!
Both the
Mordor page and the
Lothlorien page have been completed. With every units, hero, spellbook and upgrade inputted. Of course, this doesn't mean the pages are definitive editions; everybody is welcome to go and check them for mistakes or for any strategical improvements but most of the factual stuff is there.
-New Wikian: Welcome to
OakenShield224. He is often seen going around articles and greatly improving the quality of the grammar and word choice. He is key to making the articles more pleasant to the eye. I'll probably end up having him proofread the news posts
I'd also like to thank
Gandalf7000 as usual for the massive work he has done on the
Lothlorien page, without him it'd be another faction to work through. Along with that, he has been vital in editing non-mod articles such as the main page and various category pages.
-speaking of pages (not really but I needed a transition
) there is no an official guideline for naming new pages to avoid multiple version of the same page popping up. Check it out
here. Of course, you can still debate if you believe that there is a better way and we will be glad to listen to what you say, we always strive to improve and the first step to that is knowing when someone else's idea is better than yours. Along with that, we’ve also discussed several other Editing Best Practices which you can check out
here to talk about.
-RSS Feed and Main Page Slider: both have received an overhaul and are up to date with the recent influx of Angmar news
-Faction Pages have received a small aesthetic overhaul giving the heading that beautiful
Ringbearer Font and the infobox for each faction have gotten a specific color which suits them best.
-"The dwarves are upon you (again)" A complete set of badges for each
Dwarven Realm has been enabled for our Dwarf-loving contributors.
-We have successfully completed every faction page to a satisfactory level to which I am able to give you a approximate number on the total number of pages once the wiki is complete: 350. Now this number does not include:
Imladris and
Misty Mountain both very diverse faction that should add another 100 pages if not more. In addition, this does include pages that link to the same unit but under different names and non-mod pages meaning templates, policy pages or user language level pages. Along with that it is key to not that this does not include any of the
Fan-Made content to come which could become even more numerous than the actual mod pages.
-more plugin for the chat, keep a lookout for it. I will be on it from time to time but it is quite impractical so you can always contact me, or any of the other contributors, on talk pages.
-as always minor tweaks to the wiki-navigation bar to include more stuff (what else did you expect?) I have reclassified the ring-heroes and tweaked the faction bars so that they can accommodate all the faction to come, even the 2 mystery factions.
This paragraph wasn't initially like that, I had something nicely planned which I had written over a couple of days. Nevertheless, you know what they say, "Life is full of surprises" so I was just scrolling through the unread posts tinkering about what I could do to improve the post when I saw the RuudDevil video and my world just turned upside down. The Wikia’s next 3 days were spent entirely on getting the Angmar page ready based off the beta; get it primed, and ready for the Massive news post. For people who don't know or just haven't thought about it yet I don't usually freestyle those posts which means that in addition to getting the Angmar page ready I also got the news post revamped and reworked. Just when you think you have your life under control something just has to upset it.
As for the Hobbits we will abstain from adding them until proven that they're here to stay.
Nothing much more to say, I will just leave you with a couple stats (which, btw, were much lower the day right before the Angmar video release
):
-142 Pages
-595 Files
-3,844 Edits
Sincerely,
The Necromancer