Vindictus Wiki:Template Cleanup Project

The Template Cleanup Project's goal is to clean up all the templates used on the wiki. Many templates have colors and style left over from the previous skin used by the wiki, while many other templates have overly convoluted code or abuse expensive parser functions.

Goals

 * Fix deprecated styling
 * Many templates still have grays, purple, etc. These are remnants of a previous skin used by the wiki and should be updated to match the current color scheme. Also watch out for any CSS classes which no longer exist or where renamed (ie there used to be two different classes for border-radius).


 * Remove redundant styling
 * Many templates contain similar style elements. For example many templates use tables to list items and have similar appearance. Such commonly repeated style is most likely a candidate for being turned into a class in the wiki's CSS files. This shortens templates, improving the load on the server and user bandwidth, and also allows templates to be updated quicker if the wiki's skin is ever changed (again).


 * Remove wiki headings from most templates
 * Templates should make careful use of wiki headings. In general wiki headings should only be used if the template makes sections in an article, such as Template:Skill Page. Wiki headings should not be used to get bold text with an anchor in a template that consists of a styled table. Styling the cell of the table and then defining an id attribute for the cell will produce the same result without the side effects that might come with wiki headings. Also note that if a template uses wiki headings those heading might have edit links which will direct editors to the template rather than the article they are trying to edit. Use in templates were this is an issue.


 * Expensive parser function calls
 * The various list equipment pages (for example) are very demanding on the server and a cleaner method of rendering these pages should be developed.

Resources

 * Help:Templates
 * Wikipedia's help article for templates.


 * Help:Guidelines
 * Vindictus Wiki's guidelines for formatting.
 * The Guidelines page itself could use a good cleanup while we are at it.


 * Template:tcup and Category:Templates needing cleanup
 * A tag and category made to help with this project's management.