Hi everyone! Today marks the day of Zelda Wiki's 10th anniversary! In celebration we've released the new logo and Main Page we've been working on.

Credit goes to Josh Lindquist for designing the logo and most of the main page, too. (Basically, he worked real hard on it, then I stole the design and ran with it :P) Many thanks to him, Jason Rappaport and Caleb Peters for the design advice. Credit should also go to Pixel for the images used, and to many other ZW staffers who contributed ideas used in the design. It was a real team effort.

Anyway, we hope you all like the changes! Please leave a reply in this thread and tell us what you think. Also, let us know if you spot any bugs on your platform.

The wiki has come a long way in the past decade, we've good reason to be proud. Thankfully there's still much to do so we'll need you all for a while yet.

Here is a massive in-depth review based on my first impressions after seeing the new page like 10 minutes ago. Here goes:

The nice simplicity of the main page is pretty cool. There's no more random boxes of junk all over the place.

The game thumbnails are pretty painful, to be honest. The images are badly cropped official art, with plain white ugly text over it. I do like how there are the three different tabs, the Main Series, Spin-Offs and Remakes. But I feel like the full logo of each game instead would be prettier and more relevant. I do like the year display in the corner, inconspicuous yet informative.

When you first load the page, there's that super bright white logo and search box in the middle of all the blue. The yellow-gold color that is all over the place would work a lot better, if it where blended in right, maybe have a yellow line around the search box. Also, the bleached logo in the top left of every page really looks out of place surrounded by yellow font. Also, the white makes the wiki look much less professional. the formal gold seen in the games in that nice dark blue circle looked super cool and aesthetically pleasing. This is just so white its painful to look at. the off-center of the Triforce is actually kind of neat, but I'm not sure if it would look as good in the old gold, so I guess you gotta make a choice there. I'd prefer the old yellow-gold centered Triforce in the dark blue circle, which still appears as the site's icon on the browser's tab. (IE at least)

The Zelda Wiki text, though, looks really phenomenal. It looks professional and unique yet still Zelda-esque.

This was probably accidental, but the stuff under the search box, the stuff about the editableness and such, the way some things are yellow with the links makes it look like a Zelda game text box, how all the characters, when they say something important, its in a different color. Just a neat observation.

The Spin-Offs tab looks really unaligned. It oughta be straightened out, perhaps be removing those weird logos on the left of the rows, or making them smaller and out of the way. Also, a nice addition might be the game console name in small lettering on each thumbnail, like the date. Small and yet informative and out of the way and relevant. That would be a real nice addition.

The font nearer to the bottom and under the search box is in some font that isn't used very often, is it Calibri? It looks like the wordpad font on windows 7. Which is not a good thing. That standard font all over the place on the rest of the wiki looks really casual, but in a good professional sense. The Calibri looks too casual in a bad way. And its inconsistent, because there's the old font stuff all along the left side and top of the main page.

The Category spot looks really good, and I have no complaints. The MM3D icons are relevant currently, and I hope they will change upon the next game to match that game's respective looks.

The giant NEWS and DID YOU KNOW really draw a crapton of attention to themselves. That would be great if there were actually something new under them more than every few weeks at best. There's been no new did you know for an even super longer time. Every time someone sees those huge letters, they'll think there's something new. They'll be disappointed. So, either shrink that or make sure there's actually new stuff every week at least.

The NIWA table looks beautiful. No complaints here. Also, at the very very bottom, it looks very clean. (the GNU kind of crap area, very bottom) I thought there used to be more there. In any case, it looks nice.

So yeah, mainly just major whiteness issues, font, and the image choice and orientation for the game links. But very nice work. I do daresay it is an overall improvement from before, but it still needs work, as does everything, of course. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Wow, that's really thorough! Thanks!

We're not entirely satisfied with the corner logo, either. It'll probably be tweaked in the near future (maybe even scrapped if everyone really hates it).


Good point. (Funnily enough, that's one part of the layout that looks a lot better on smaller screens. If you shrink your window enough, the games drop down below the logos and everything lines up nicely.)


I'm glad you brought that up. Another staff member (Pixel) suggested the same thing, but I was against it. The main reason why the dates were added (The Goron Moron's idea, by the way) was to show that the games are in reverse-chronological release order, which may not be obvious to many casuals. I'm afraid that if we add more subtext to the thumbnails they may be less readable. It would be informative, but it also kind of goes against the whole "keeping it simple" design. Plus, that information is readily available on the game pages themselves, just one click away.

I'm not saying flat out "no" to the idea, those are just my two cents on it.


It's Open Sans, and the same font is used everywhere on the main page. I guess it just looks different when it's big and bold.
We're open to suggestions for fonts as long as they're free. =P


I fixed the top but kept the left sidebar unchanged. If we change the font on the sidebar it'll be inconsistent with how it looks across the rest of the wiki. Also, I find it just looks odd with the main page font on account of all the links stacked together. Just my two cents, again.

Your other points have also been noted but I may not the best person to answer to them seeing as I inherited those parts of the design. I might have to follow up on the rest at a later time.

Thanks again!

Ah, I forgot one thing.



We'd like that, but it depends on what material the games give us to work with. I'm not really hopeful that future games will give us a nice set of fitting icons like MM3D did. Like, what other than the Bomber's Notebook would work as well for the Events category? But we'll certainly give it a try when the time comes.

No problem. I'm happy to help.

I forgot to mention that Zelda U's release date really ought to be TBA. There is a small possibility of 2015, or even 2017 if they delay it to the NX, like TP was with the Wii. TBA is really best or else it sounds like we have some confirmed source on that, which we don't, unless I've been living under a rock for a month.

Also, I was owndering, (stupid laptop keyboards stink) er, wondering about how on each page about a game, there is that bar at the top with all the Link heads (which I was glad was removed form the main page) and links to the other game pages. Was this put there to avoid scrapping the old main page bar entirely, or what? The head thumbnails always looked not the best. Also, there is that box thing at the bottom of the page with links to the other game pages and such. If it were up to me, I'd say scrap the Link heads and either replace it with the game logos, because they're more identifiable than the official artwork heads to casuals. Yeah, there's the little tiny font under each poorly cropped head, but the logos would be much better in my humble opinion, and then we don't have to squint to see the text.

Ooh, I just had a better idea! Instead of the heads from the art, why not the heads/sprites from in-game? That would also be more identifiable to casuals and would show the evolution of the hero over the 30 years. But hey, that's just a suggestion, don't mind me.

And, since two days ago, there are three new DID YOU KNOWS, so color me impressed. Whether you all planned to revive that list or stuck up three new ones because I complained, I don't care. But try to keep those coming. They're some of the coolest things to read on the whole site, because they're usually actually things not very many people know about.

As a last nitpick from me, The NIWA links might be better served on the left sidebar in all that massive open space under the whatever all those links are. As is, they seem to be way too emphasized there at the bottom, in huge boxes. Seriously, I've never clicked on any of those. Perhaps its just me.

The navigation bar above the game articles have always been there. It was probably made around the same time as the old main page.

We do plan to update it at some point but I wouldn't exactly say it's a priority. In fact, I kind of wonder if there's much point to having it at all. I don't imagine it's very widely used, and it's just going to become more and more bulky and in-the-way as new games are released. And we already have this thing at the end of every game article anyway.

I'm unable to register my email with a new account on the site. I get the error below, even though it's a valid email. Apologies for using this thread, I couldn't find a help email or any similar link on the site.

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!! It actually kind of reminds me of some of Zelda Universes interface and it is AWESOME!!!! I think whoever did it did a really good job and overall, IT IS AWESOME!!!!!

Ooh, thanks for changing Zelda U's release date to TBD! I think its MUCH MUCH better that way.

I also just now found out that no search recommendations pop up for that giant white search box in the middle of the page. This is a large problem. Many articles are not named what you'd think, so if you type in a thing that isn't redirected or an article name, you'll get a really bad search result page. (Has anyone else noticed how badly the search engine works?) Forcing one to use the upper little hidden box is irritating. I use the recommendations that pop up A LOT for everything. So, yeah. It might just be my browser?

That's really odd. I distinctly recall the search bar having suggestions enabled when I was working on it, but now that I go back to it, it doesn't work for me either.

Hopefully a solution will present itself. For now I'm at a loss. :/

Well, I hope that gets fixed someday. For now, we can use the upper right. If you could, when the suggestions are enabled, could you make sure one is able to right click a suggestion and open it in a new tab? I like looking at the enemy image galleries, and when I type in Enemies, suggestions for "Enemies in X game" pop up, and its just convenient if one is able to open a few on the main page without going to the results page and using the links to the pages there that are right-clickable. Some sites don't have this option, and it sucks. (Amazon, for example.)

There also ought to be some way to either view the Did You Know archive, or just display more than 3 at once. I'm sure I missed some in the week since I checked, which sucks for me, sure, but it would be nice to see the older ones. But the fact they change so often is really cool, don't get me wrong. And the fact its all interesting things. (I'm a nut for cool little things like that. I went and tested whether Morpha's tentacles could be Din's Fired, and yes they can! It was so cool to learn that!) But by the time I'm able to check out in more detail one of them, it's practically replaced by the next one. I might just be being an idiot, and there's always been a way to view the older ones, but looking at News right next to it, with its "Announcement archives" link, I'm not so sure. If there is a way to do this already, please let me know.

One other thing I mentioned in passing earlier: Will that logo be changed in the tab name? (I mean, at least in IE, next to the tab name is a site logo, and its still the old one. Any plans to change that?)

Sorry for all this overwhelm of probable nitpicking, but I feel like I oughta provide as accurate feedback as I can, me being an average user, especially seeing as how the only other people to respond said "IT IS AWESOME" and "I'm unable to register my email" after a few whole weeks of it being up. Let me know if this is irritating.

And, though this is not the right place, but its important, could someone please explain to me why the Mario wiki has an official Sm4sh artwork of Ganondorf that is 3 times bigger than the Zelda wiki?

zeldawiki.org/File:SSB4_Ganondorf.png
mariowiki.com/File:GanondorfSSB4.png

For future reference, the proper place for that kind of thing would be the Zelda Wiki Suggestions, Feedback and Requests Thread.

One other thing I mentioned in passing earlier: Will that logo be changed in the tab name? (I mean, at least in IE, next to the tab name is a site logo, and its still the old one. Any plans to change that?)

I've updated the favicon as well as the home screen bookmark icon for iOS and Android.

The "Did You Know" section randomly selects trivia from, let's say, a "bank". Our randomizer hasn't worked for the past year or so, but I think I've fixed it now. You should now see different trivia every time you refresh the page. We rarely remove trivia from the bank, so you can't really "miss" anything; every bit of trivia we add will show up every once in a while. (We can put more weight on any new ones we add so they show up more often).

There currently isn't any way to see the whole list of trivia that appears on the Main Page. We'll see what we can do about that.

Sorry for all this overwhelm of probable nitpicking, but I feel like I oughta provide as accurate feedback as I can, me being an average user, especially seeing as how the only other people to respond said "IT IS AWESOME" and "I'm unable to register my email" after a few whole weeks of it being up. Let me know if this is irritating.

Nonsense, we appreciate all feedback! That reminds me...



Thanks! We're glad you like it.

Ooh, nice change to the tab thingy logo. Is it really called a favicon? Is that because its the icon on the favorites list you see if you add it to favorites? Oh, wait a sec. Its back to the old one. Its all yellow now in both Chrome and IE. Wasn't it changed to white? I just saw it a few days ago. Is it not working anymore, or is it just me? I can send a screenshot if you'd like.

I really like the trivia fix. And, thanks for changing Zelda U's date. I think the only other big thing is that search recommendation thing in the big white box. Other than that, I've learned to live with all my nitpicking points. I've grown to like the use of an official artwork on the game thumbnails.

Oh, wait a sec. Its back to the old one. Its all yellow now in both Chrome and IE. Wasn't it changed to white?

Correct, it was changed but we decided to roll it back. We first tried dark blue, but realized it didn't contrast properly on darker browser themes. (Conversely, the white didn't work for light themes). As far as I can see the only way to make that color scheme work would be to have a square favicon that looked like this:


We thought the old yellow favicon looked better, so we'll be keeping it unless someone can think of a better idea (or if everyone else really likes the square one).

Yeah, that square looks kinda icky. The yellow looks great.

I noticed the games were switched to publication order from reverse publication. Any particular reason this happened?

...And now they're back to reverse.

I modified the code so that on small screens the Main Page would look like this instead of like this. I felt it was better to "spotlight" new games at the top rather than single out old games at the bottom.

This makes use of a fairly new feature called "flexbox" that isn't supported in older versions of Internet Explorer. The Main Page won't load correctly on IE 10 or before (as well as much older versions of the other major browsers).

Flexboxes do another great thing behind the scenes to stabilize the code, and since such a minute fraction of our readership uses outdated browsers, it's a worthwhile change.

Hey, I've got some more relevant stuff to call to your attention.
Sometimes, the square favicon you showed us pops up on my tab and sometimes, within seconds, the old one pops up as well, and it seems to be random. The old one appears slightly more often, though.
Oh, wait a sec. It seems the square one shows up only when I click on an image to view the full size. Other, regular wiki pages only have the old one, based on these 7 wiki page tabs I'm having open stimultaneously. That's Google Chrome, but I also use IE 11.something-or-other a lot, but not usually for huge poster images like the ones I've got open, so I'd have to check with the same tabs in IE to see if its in that as well. Let me know if I oughta do so.


Also, this is totally my internet's fault, but occasionally this garbage happens where the blue theme is all stripey and most of the page is white, with the news box in light blue and the text all weirded out. If I knew how to paste images here, I would do so. If you'd like to see a visually disgusting image, let me know how the frik to best get it to you, or the favicon tab issue screenshot. At least I think that's my internet connection's fault. Its pretty faulty in my apartment complex.
[checks how to stick an image in a post]
Oh, well, I'm too lazy for that.


Yeah, on a mildly unrelated note, I look at art galleries on ZW, and then download the big awesome ones and stick them in a folder and set my screensaver to play all those as a slideshow. I hope thats not illegal, and if it is, who'd gonna stop me from right clicking and saving in a folder called "screen saver" on my private computer? And, speaking of, how does whoever it is have access to the Nintendo Assets Library? Its only for the press and businesses and stuff. I'm real curious. If its accessed illegally, I don't care, because I get to gawk at the beautiful detail on the Hyrule Warriors renders and the SS character art and the epic MM3D 5000 pixel poster.


I also thought I'd let you know about the main page on the DSi browser, which is, methinks, developed by Opera. I don't own a 3DS, but I'm sure it would work a lot better on that browser. I can say, though, that the DSi actually displays it surprisingly well. If you've got a DSi, try it out. most webpages across the board are too big to display, the DSi can only hold so much data in its little memory banks before it whines and spits out "Out of memory, page is too big to display, refresh or clear history to load more" or something like that. However, ZW works rather well. The main thing is that EVERYTHING on the sides, top and bottom of the page don't display at all. They might if I refreshed or cleared history, but I didn't try that. One can search using the big ol' white box in the center, which one couldn't do before the update since the upper right search box didn't load at all.

The little cropped artworks load well, and all the links seem to function. I have text wrap on, which, well, wraps the text to display in a column tht fits the screen. The game artworks and links list displays two in a row, but oddly does so from old to new. I have Chrome open as I type, and I can see it has new to old, but 3 minutes ago I put away my DSi and it had old to new. Also, the remakes and spinoffs tabs don't work so well, and if they do, the whole main page has to reload, but thats to be expected. The only sites that work decently that I've found are Wikipedia, Google and Gmail in basic HTML, and a couple obscure ones, mostly ones with a mobile site setting or with low complexity, like ZW. So, kudos on a simple format that even a DSi can render. (It also does the content pages very well; it always has.)


Moving on, the ads suck. I don't remember there being ads where they are now, namely the top, bottom and sidebar. Perhaps I'm a doofus. But if you guys actually started selling ad space within the last week, it sucks. If I'm a doofus, it means they actually aren't that bad cuz I didn't see them until 10 minutes ago. Right now I've got "What does Semper Fi mean" ad at the top and Rift for PC at the bottom, and an unloaded one on the side. They really aren't that bad. Whatever happens, never ever allow stupid ads to fill the screen, suck away processign power, and lock the computer up until you can finally exit it after the exit button itself loads. Like zeldainformer.com, for example. My goodness those make me want to scream. Moral is, the current ads are bearable.

[And thanks for putting up the high quality Sm4sh Ganondorf, despite it being in the wrong forum here. The Brawl ones are low quality too. I can live with that, though.]

Apologies for boring you to death with this stuff. Let me know when it gets unbearable.