"Front Page" Header Label, how to change . . .

I am sorry, but we have the first page on your and everyone's wikis set to be "FrontPage" - much like index.html.

I know it's not ideal, but you can always change the title of your wiki (Settings|About this Wiki) and write whatever welcoming message you want inside that first page.

I'm curious as to the usability benefits in changing the first page to something other than FrontPage. If you really wanted to, I suppose you could also redirect elsewhere, inserting an HTML plugin into the FrontPage like so:

<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5; url=SOME_OTHER_PAGE"></meta>

I don't think it's a usability issue at all; it's an aesthetic issue. I understand that webservers prefer to have a consistent starting point, but even a crappy webserver like IIS doesn't plaster the words "index.htm" on the top of the page. It's visually unappealing, and can make it difficult to realize a particular "vision" for a corporate website.

Guy captures the essence of the issue - aesthetics and site branding. Besides didn't a company in Redmond have a (now defunct?) web authoring tool named FrontPage? Don't really want visitors to think my wiki was written in MS-Frontpage.

In PBwiki 2.0, we let you do a lot more with the colors of your wiki and allow you to upload a logo that is displayed at the top of every page. Why don't you try that out now?

We know that people want to be able to personalise their wikis, but there is something to be said for a cohesive interface across all wikis. If nothing else, when you land on someone else's wiki, just by looking at it, you still know how things work, how to navigate, how to edit - and how to ask someone for help if you get stuck.

If you want a website, make your own website. There are plenty of ways out there to do that. But if you want a collaboration tool with a simple interface, that with little to no training, anyone can use, and most can personalise, then grab yourself a PBwiki.

Furthermore, for branding purposes, PBwiki 2.0 will (eventually) give customers the ability to control their CSS.

One of the reasons things are limited at this point is because 1.0 became increasingly awkward to handle as the skins became more and more diversified. That's one of the reasons why the Qua skin would break every time something new was introduced--the new element was not included in the skin's CSS and it would go crazy.

Just like with PBwiki 1.0, I think as time progresses, users will find their ways to make PBwiki look the way they want and PBwiki will figure out how to make that easier.

Limitations aren't necessarily evil. However, it seems like Vu and Casey are missing the point. It's simply a desire to alter the "FrontPage" text that appears next to your site name. It's not rocket science and perhaps the CSS control can help with this.

Warmer/aggiefly: are you trying to do this with 1.0 or 2.0? I can show you how to do it with 1.0, and we're working on making it possible with 2.0. (It may cost money to do it with 2.0, but at least it might be possible).

Well, I think it's a reasonable request, and I'm doing my best to give answers within the parameters of the official PBwiki product and its capabilities. At the moment, you are unable to change the name of the first page you go to. However, it's possible to do something like a meta refresh that takes you to another page, so that FrontPage always bounces elsewhere. That solution can be seen above.

I think it's an excellent request. I just wish "the parameters of the official PBwiki product and its capabilities" were more clearly defined. Common sense (of which I have precious little) says that if something works, and it's not specifically banned anywhere, then it's within the "capabilities" of PBwiki.

As it now stands, just because something works in PBwiki is no guarantee that a future release won't break it, calling it "a workaround".

Case in point: If I purchased CSS support for 1.0, and spent a lot of money having a designer create a custom skin for my platinum wiki, that money would all be wasted in 2.0.

Hopefully, PBwiki's next major upgrade won't be as disruptive as this one has been.

I agree, all I want to do is change the text, it's kind of a big deal because it's the page that everyone sees when they login.

Jon, et. al.,

Using the 'Any Google Gadget' plugin, place the following code on your FrontPage:

Replace 'Home' with whatever you'd like the text to be. See the FrontPage of the 2.0 Forum Demo Wiki for an example.

Sorry, GetSatisfaction's Delete and Edit functions are broken (sorry, beta).

Here's the code from the previous post (I hope):

<script>document.getElementById("page-col-2").getElementsByTagName('h1')[0].innerHTML = 'Home';</script>

Yea Guy! Once again, your ankles are just getting wet as you walk across the water! Thanks for the code.

it's aesthetics AND just a huge space killer. A majority of the students are on small CRT screens and that space plus the comment space, etc just kill too much real estate.

Why don't you start another thread about hiding the comment space? A new thread with it's own tags will make it easier for other users to find, and we can discuss using this same technique there.