Forum:Holiday theme?

Alright, I know our last temporary theme change (for the release of Supernatural) wasn't discussed on-wiki, but I felt that this one should be since it may be a bit more controversial.

I'm wondering whether we should put in a temporary theme change on the wiki in celebration of Christmas. I know that not everyone celebrates Christmas (or any holiday, in some cases), so I'd hope the theme we picked would be as secular (i.e. not religious) as possible. This is a festive time of year in most English-speaking places, even among people who aren't Christians, so I'm wondering whether we want to celebrate it in our own small way here.

To give my opinion right away... I for one don't think non-Christians would be insulted/offended by modest 'holiday decoration'... from personal experience in the US, you get Christmas shoved into your face from all directions so I think most people tend to have thick skin about it, so long as people aren't shoving crosses and bibles into your face too. Ultimately the kind of theme I'm thinking of would mostly be:
 * A redesigned logo, possibly replacing the plumbbob with a Christmas tree, Christmas cane, wreath or something festive, along with a re-color
 * Re-coloring the wiki, probably to some combination of red, green and white (typical Christmas colors)
 * A Christmas-themed slider image (think Santa Claus, snowy scenes, etc)

Ultimately I think we should 'decorate' for major holidays, and Christmas, and the entire 'December Holidays' seasons, is about as big as they come.

In addition to figuring out whether or not we should do this, an additional question would be when we'd implement the changes (assuming we choose to do this).

--  LiR speak ~ read 02:33, November 24, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
I think that's not a bad idea, but take into consideration that, as you said, some users may not celebrate Christmas, and for that matter on the opposite side of the world from where I live, a lot of people are in the Summer seasons. And considering this is the sims wiki, I would suggest maybe having a scene from Seasons where we have some sims either throwing snowballs, riding a sleigh, or building a snowman. And another idea: how about we use the idea of a Christmas tree, and put a Plumbbob on the top instead of a typical angel or star? 02:46, November 24, 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds cool. I think we should go with a winter-y theme, even though its not winter everywhere at christmas (i.e. where I live). I have to go somewhere later today, but I'll have a ton of spare time there, so I might make up a couple of possible examples of what we could make. As for when we actually implement it, I'm tempted to say around the start of December or so, and just go with it for the entire month. It's not like we are jumping the gun, the shopping centre near my house put up their decorations last week. All in all, cool idea, and it shouldn't be too much work once we work out a background and some basic colours.
 * Perhaps we can start early or early-mid December? Snowy and Santa Claus-y themes might sound okay too. I know that half of the world don't celebrate Christmas in Winter, but the way I mostly think about it, the festive feeling is always like Winter in my mind (or TV shows, they always show Christmas in winter, like Home Alone 2 over and over. Sheesh). Nonetheless, I never knew if snow and Santa Clause are related to religious things, no?  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  04:51, November 24, 2012 (UTC)
 * Snow isn't particularly associated with religion, and I don't think Santa Claus is myself (apologies in advance if I've made one huge mistake here, I don't know much about religion), although everywhere you go there will always be a 0.01% of people who are overly impacted and take this sort of thing too seriously. I think that we should just go for whatever we want with the theme, as other religions are pretty tolerant of this sort of thing from my experience. Besides, if someone is offended by us doing this they can always leave an admin a message/use monobook/change their personal .css
 * Works for me. It'd be seasonal-festive, at least for us Northern Hemisphere types, and it'd link to the recent release of TS3:Seasons. Dharden (talk) 13:22, November 24, 2012 (UTC)
 * Snow/winter-theme would only be relevant to northern North America and parts of Europe where it's typically snowy this time of year. It wouldn't apply to more southern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere or pretty much anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. --  LiR speak ~ read 21:27, November 24, 2012 (UTC)
 * I can't see any reason not to implement one and could stand as a nice break from the current theme. 21:59, November 24, 2012 (UTC)

Snow theme
While it's not exactly Christmas-y, it does fit with The Sims 3: Seasons and the recent weather some of us in the North Hemisphere may have had. I've developed a snow theme using a promotional image that I planned to use for a Seasons reskin I never finished and some open source JS. If you want to install it to your personal skin files just to check it out then follow these instructions:
 * Add  to your personal JS file.
 * Click here to install the background to your personal CSS.

I understand it may still need a bit of work (image quality is kind of blocky and was optimised for a 1080p display), aside from any possible adjustments to fit Christmas, and I currently have no ideas for, if we want to pursue one, the mosaic change but I'm interested in what everyone thinks and whether or not we should go for a site-wide implementation. From a quick look at things, it appears to be easy on the eyes and doesn't disrupt page readability due to our semi-transparent background. 14:27, December 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * I like it. I'm thinking it would look better if we removed the header mosaic while we use it though. Also, as an aside, there is a blue bar on both sides of the screen which I'm assuming is the background colour or something. Probably a side effect of the size of the image (fwiw my screen resolution is 1920x1080). Also, I'm thinking that we change the buttons, toolbars, header, etc to a blue of some sort, and to my knowledge themeDesigner can do that.
 * The blue bars are the background colour for this particular skin; if a large number of users are seeing the bars then I can further optimise the image if need be (note I'm using a 1366x768 laptop monitor). I'm cool with changing the colours of the logo and navigation elements to either a Christmas-related theme or a blue of some kind - either one would compliment the skin. 22:31, December 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * Minor note - turns out due to the aspect ratio, the image was actually 1856×1080 pixels as opposed to 1920x1080. I've updated it to fit the true 1080p resolution/aspect ratio and the changes should automatically be applied when Wikia's image data caches. 22:35, December 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the snowy theme works well, if paired with perhaps a christmas-y logo or recolored buttons (think more of an 'evergreen' green, as opposed to the light green we use now). Otherwise if we want to go 'full winter' I'd suggest what Wogan stated; change the navigation and maybe even the nav header background to something light blue; I was thinking, perhaps it would be possible to take our normal wiki background image (the green plumbbobs) and re-color it light blue? Just a thought. ---  LiR speak ~ read 23:11, December 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * Interesting idea with changing the colour of our current background - I don't think it would be christmas-y myself but I guess it could be worth a shot. I might do some stuff with the plumbob one in photoshop later today and post it when I'm done.
 * A minor thought... We might want to bump the opacity of the content space up a little bit (or down? I'm not sure... I think up is correct) just so the text on-screen is still easy to read. --  LiR speak ~ read 23:18, December 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * Forgive me if I sound arrogant whilst saying this as I did put it together but I think the snow theme might work better than LiR's blue plumbbob idea just as it fits winter better and is a nice change from the usual skin. That said if something cool does come out of a plumbbob recolour (if anyone is going to try one) then I'm more than interested in seeing what it looks like and how well it fits. 17:21, December 9, 2012 (UTC)
 * I was talking about using the recolored plumbbob image as the header image (replacing the Sims mosaic image). I definitely think we should use the snow theme as the background... and if you've got an idea for what to use for the header I'd be interested to see that too. I aint talkin' bout chicken n' gravy, after all. --  LiR speak ~ read 00:00, December 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * Makes sense lol. 00:03, December 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess the snow is kind of making the browser slow, too bad. Just a thought, whether the current theme color should be light blue (winter-y) or red and green (Christmas-y)?  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  03:18, December 11, 2012 (UTC)
 * The snow effect is mainly there for cosmetic purposes; it's not necessary but it looks kind of dull without it. I'm not sure how (if it's possible) to add code to a personal JS file to disable the snow completely if we do add it to MediaWiki:Wikia.js but if it's proving to be problematic then I'll look into it.


 * As for the theme colour scheme, I say we may as well go for a Christmas theme just to tie in with the holiday season and to cater to as many as possible, although light blue may be better for the snow effect - either option works for me.


 * Finally, I don't mean to rush things but I would like to see this thread concluded within the next few days so we can implement the theme before Christmas has been and gone. 12:10, December 14, 2012 (UTC)

Conclusion
Closed - Okay seeing as this has died, I'm just going to be bold and implement the theme as it is. I've switched the colour scheme to an evergreen and red combination (CSS is conflicting with the wiki navigation bar) and added a couple of snow images to the slider, one of which contains Christmas lights. Currently we don't have a Christmas logo and anyone who wishes to create one is welcome to. Also, a snowy image of Monte Vista would be appreciated. 14:17, December 16, 2012 (UTC)