A cool thing we've found is that with the new additions we've made to the
portal page, our google pagespeed insight tests are *much* better!
We've gone from a rating of *59* (mobile) and *76* (desktop) from the old
version of the page to *91* (mobile) and *97* (desktop) with all the recent
changes, yay!
For fun, you can test the new page here
<https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikipedia.org&tab=desktop>
and old page here
<https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20160105135515%2Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikipedia.org%2F&tab=desktop>
(old
page is from 01 Jan 2016 via the way back machine
<https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.wikipedia.org>).
Cheers,
Deb
--
Deb Tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
IRC: debt
Wikimedia Foundation
On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Deborah Tankersley <
dtankersley(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Everyone who uses the
wikipedia.org
<https://www.wikipedia.org/> [1]
portal is familar with the look of the page: a beautiful puzzle globe
encirled by the top ten viewed languages; a long list with Wikipedias in
hundreds of languages that can all be read and explored; the search box
that can make queries in nearly any language; and a compilation of related
Wikimedia projects.
Over the last eight months, the Wikimedia Foundation's Portal team
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal> [2], part of the Discovery
department <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery> [3], has
been busy improving the discoverability of information within the portal to
make it more contemporary and easier to use.
To start, we’ve updated the search box. When you are entering a query, you
will now see images and metadata that correspond to your search
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia,org-searchbox_highlight-Aug2016_screenshot.png>
[4], and you're also free change the search language without leaving the
page.
We’ve also optimized the portal site, making it load faster by utilizing
smaller sized images and streamlining the page code.
A fairly inconspicuous change to the page will immediately detect your
browser’s preferred (or default) language and rearrange the top ten links
to display those languages first, along with the remaining top ten viewed
wiki’s by language, around the globe.
In this example
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikipedia.org-globe-sorted-languages_screenshot.png>
[5], The Free Encyclopedia is displayed in Portuguese, since it is the
browser’s first preferred language and English is the second.
Here is a helpful site
<https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-lang-priorities> [6] that
explains how to change your preferred language on various browsers.
We’ve also added sister project descriptions
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-sister-projects-text_screenshot.png>
[7], located in the page’s footer, which will hopefully spark curiosity
as to what a person might find when they visit those individual projects.
The look and feel of the long list of every available language wiki
(sorted by article count) has been modernized and placed inside an
elegant drop down
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-language-dropdown_screenshot.png>
[8]. This new feature makes finding your language wiki a bit easier on
the eyes as well as providing easy access on any device.
We hope you enjoy using the new portal page! You can view a short video
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Wikipedia.org-new-layout_movie-Aug2016.ogg>
[9] that shows some of these new features.
*And, if you don’t quite remember what the old Wikipedia portal site
looked like before we made any changes, here’s a reminder
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-01Jan2016.png> *
[10].
Cheers from the Discovery Portal Team!
[1]
https://www.wikipedia.org/
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_Portal
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery
[4]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia,org-search
box_highlight-Aug2016_screenshot.png
[5]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWikipedia.org-glob
e-sorted-languages_screenshot.png
[6]
https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-lang-priorities
[7]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-sister
-projects-text_screenshot.png
[8]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-langua
ge-dropdown_screenshot.png
[9]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Wikipedi
a.org-new-layout_movie-Aug2016.ogg
[10]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia.org-01Jan2016.png
--
Deb Tankersley
Product Manager, Discovery
IRC: debt
Wikimedia Foundation