[!] So... about that amazing wiki...

I'm not sure if I should approach groveling, begging, sobbing, pleading, or with a perky smile and open wallet... so I'll just do a combination of all those things.

My name is Lettuce (well, really it is Sage, but is there much a difference between leafy green plants?) - I actually have affiliated with you guys in the past and know a few of you from old days at the Neopian Orphanage ages ago. I am usually constantly lurking around here just to bask in the beauty and the creative energy that syncs so well with my own. Not to mention a mutual love of skill systems, housing systems, and pixel images. I would have joined a million times over if I didn't have such a mental brick wall when it comes to thinking up modern characters. The mental carnage when I attempt to do such a thing is rather horrific.

I'm trying to shout out to Emma, actually. I have utterly, hopelessly fallen in love with the layout and design of the wiki that Elysian Fields uses. It isn't just pretty or beautiful - it is the pinnacle of creative design. Functional, organized, and polished until it gleams so brightly it is almost difficult to look at directly. I've been fighting our own wiki layout and coding for over a year now, but nothing I've ever churned out has ever, ever come close to looking or - most importantly - working as good as what you have.

We recently restarted our site (it used to be known as Mossleaf, now it is Eternal Gardens) and I've been trying to overhaul the wiki to make it even mildly functional - in the past we've simply not been able to make the layout flow well enough when it came to navigation, organization, and making new pages. Our poor members got confused and wandered off.

I have been tearing my hair out, reading and attempting to apply endless days worth of edits, and pushed to tears and sacrifice to the unseen Wiki Layout Gods. But still my efforts are childish and for nothing. It is time to admit that while I may have the ability to make phpBB3 and SMF flip and dance for me, I can't do a think about making a wiki layout even functional.

So I begged for help elsewhere, but very few people on the tech forums seem to understand my intentions, especially when I explain it is for a role-playing site (and a tiny one, at that). And I keep coming back to the fact that, as with so many things, perfection has already been found and it is tucked into the way you've designed your wiki (and website and forum and so on, but focusing on the layout of wikis has consumed my life right now).

So, hesitatingly, I finally come here. I know how frustrating it is to have made an awesome thing and have someone come along and want to use it, so it was only after I threw myself on my bed to scream into my pillow in frustration for the upteenth time today that I decided it couldn't hurt to ask.

Is there any way I could be allowed to use the basic layout - navigation on the left, editing information up top/bottom, and general spacing of the header/sidebar/content - for my own wiki?

I am very open on "any way" too - without question credit and a direct link to EF tucked neatly on every page, Emma's name in worshipping bold, advertising space on the main forum front and center, a constantly scrolling marquee (and I hate marquees), "Celebrate EF day!" every month, a EF bumper-sticker on my bumper-sticker-less car... I don't have much money (read: -3.99 at the moment) but if a fee needed to be in place I'd save up for it. I'll willingly and eagerly offer up my personal information in case you wanted the reassurance of being able to take legal action, including information about my hosting right down to my library card number.

I'd do all the leg-work myself, I just... am beyond exhausted wrestling with this code, trying to make it pass as a half-decent wiki, and ending up driven further and further away from my creative hobby just because I can't make this work. Time to admit defeat and ask for help. I'd break down in tears for the ease of just being able to change some css, images, and basic layout design (so that, of course, it doesn't look identical) but if that is impossible, if I could just be pointed in the direction of where to start learning how to make the real and proper changes...

All I want is to just be able to make a page about my Panda Orchids and not bash my head into my desk because of how the layout looks.

EG - Eternal Gardens - isn't very big, either. We have like... five regular members. I'd love to see us grow, but I reassure you it isn't like I'm a big site or big company wanting in on your awesome secrets... I just want to do the best I can for this beautiful hobby and awesome little world my friends and I have developed.

Well... that was extremely rambely, but I've reached a point of frightening desperation. I have always stuck to the belief that if one needs to make their RPG awesome, one needs to pull oneself up by the bootstraps and learn how to make it work. But I've been bootstrap pulling to the point of a wedgie and have gotten absolutely no where.

To clarify:

Could I, with credit everywhere, have permission and access to the basics of the wikipedia layout?

Colors, images, etc. would be changed and of course NO content would be taken - I have absolutely no desire to have our wiki look identical, just for the beauty, simplicity, elegance, and functionality of the layout's basic design. Credit on every page. Pages of credit. Money could be involved if needed, though I must warn of extreme poverty. Personal information would be offered up so the transfer could be considered secure and you could have our wee little hobby site taken down if we broke any agreements.

I'll timidly be checking this thread, but I am also available:
AIM - serilazuli
e-mail - dizzifulbliss@gmail.com

Or over in the c-box or PMs at Eternal Gardens, though I've been buried so deep in wiki-code I've not had a chance to come out and play for a while.

Above all, I hope I didn't offend. I have no intentions or desire to rip anything from anyone... I can just recognize when someone made something more functional and effective than I ever could hope to, and that it may be a better way to spend my time seeing if I could implement that as well rather than spend a few MORE weeks (yes, weeks) tearing my hair out and getting... no where.

zero-calorie internet cookies? *offers*

Hello, Lettuce! (omg, I didn't know you were a TNOer, even though I've been semi-stalking Mossleaf for a while. I was scared it was gone.

What was your TNO name, btw? Mine was Freesong. *_*)

Well, wow. After such wonderful praise, I really wish I could take full credit for our wiki layout, just so I deserved everything you offered and could help more. Really, though, all I did was customise the basic template for the wiki media we use, which is from PmWiki. You can probably see from their own template that I can't be credited with much of anything beyond our banner and colours. *sheepish*

Actually, it occurs to me now that I really should credit them on our own wiki and the credit page is terribly misleading. I'm normally so careful to credit where it's due, I can't believe I'd missed that and want to thank you for making me realise. I'm really very ashamed of myself at the moment and have made sure to fix it right away!

I would be very happy to try and help in any way I can, though. I know how frustrating it can be to put your all into making something look perfect and having to fight tooth and claw to do it. You're welcome to take a look at the css for our wiki (if you don't already know - and it took me a while to figure this out when I switched from IE to FF a few years ago - if you have firefox you can go into View > Page Source but that's a bit confusing. I never actually use that option, though, because I have the Web Developer add-on and find it immensely helpful when I'm skinning/making layouts: you can use it to find out element details like id/class names, what style is already applied to a particular div/paragraph, and so on.)

I think what you can do with layout may ultimately depend on the wiki media you're using, but some of them offer free templates that you might be able to use as a base as well. I was lucky that PmWiki's was fairly close to what I wanted, and all I really had to do (besides colour to match our default skin and website - and remake the banner to match as well, since the original didn't tile and I didn't keep a pspimage version T_T

) was resize certain elements (I made our side bar a fixed 180px, for example, when the original layout I think was fluid). I also added a bunch of modifications for things like the Wikipedia-style category list at the bottom of certain pages and the table of contents, and then styled those separately.

Um, from one wiki manager to another, if you aren't already neck-deep in pages I'd recommend PmWiki just because it has a lot of customisability and is fairly simple to manage (and I think fairly easy to use from a non-coder perspective?), unlike some I saw that were pretty complicated just to install. ¬_¬ I'm curious to know which media you're using currently, as well?

I'm really sorry I'm not more of a wiki guru, though. Everything you said was so lovely and considered, I wish I deserved it. Not that I would have taken your money even if I was - I would have tried to help for free - but you made such an effort with your post. I really am ashamed, but I hope it won't reflect badly on EF. I'm usually so much more careful.

Please let me know if you need any help with the css. I might not be able to take credit for the basic layout but I can help you customise it if you like. I would dearly love to re-affiliate with you, too, I was sad when we lost touch before.

In any case, I wish you the best of luck! But, as someone who loves designing websites, I urge you to take a break as much as you can. It's no fun if, well, if it's not fun.