Thread:Gemspinner019/@comment-188432-20140516192152/@comment-188432-20140718022351

Your comments have in no way engendered ill will. If anything, they've only spurred me on to make sure you get something really awesome. I have been working on your project solidly this week, and expect to be largely finished later this afternoon/evening or tomorrow.

Here's a progress report:

The wordmark has been cleaned up and greatly enhanced. I think you'll find it "pops" quite a bit more, and uses the PopCap-standard white outline and 3D effects.

I've spent about a day looking for fonts that make sense for the property. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use your suggestions, as those fonts are not royalty free. As an employee of Wikia, I really can't, in good conscience, "cheat" and use them anyway.

Thus, I initially tried to just track down the in-game fonts. After some considerable searching and forensic analysis of several key elements of font design, I came to the conclusion that they PopCap have created their own proprietary fonts, and that there was no readily-available version of them on the net.

That then left me with trying to find close approximates. I've looked through many game screens (for Bejweled 3) and I've combed through every video that PopCap have put out. Following that, I've found two free-for-commerical-use fonts that are good approximates.

What i've discovered is that I was able to make two near-PopCap fonts work satisfyingly well together: PopCap's "cursive" font, which they occasionally use in advertisements — principally as seen in their Snackers and Anchovy campaign — along with the in-game sans-serif font that they regularly use anywhere in Bejeweled 3 that's not a headline.

I tracked those down, uploaded them to w:c:czechitout, gave the headers a "Bejeweled purple", and then assigned the fonts to the right part of the code. Results can currently be seen at w:c:czechitout:Dream Spinner.

I honestly don't know how much experience you have with Wikia outside of w:c:bejeweled, so if what I'm about to say is really basic to you, please just feel free to nod and pat me on the head. Most of the time, when people use "fancy fonts" on Wikia, they're actually going into Photoshop, creating a graphic based upon that font, and then uploading that graphic onto their site. But that doesn't help your SEO ranking with Google at all. In fact, it kinda hurts it. By actually taking the time to find a couple of reasonably approximate fonts and uploading them, Google can fully read that text — and we can use these fonts wherever we like — and we can force every browser to download them. So whatever experience you're having is one that I'm having too. It takes longer to do all the homework and figure it out — but in the end it delivers a better product.

Complementing the fonts is a colour scheme that was based directly on Bejeweled Blitz. I think when you see it, you'll say, "Yeah, that looks like something from the Bejeweled franchise."

I have also sourced a number of videos for the front page and drawn up a rough paper mockup. The building of the content of the front page is by far the least of our worries, particularly as you have the DYK section effectively operational (at least for registered users). Additionally, I've sourced some clean jewels from the game which, as you suggested initially, will be incorporated on the front page, likely as a header accent.

That leaves us with the background, and honestly this thing has taken the longest time. The problem is that Wikia have designed the background to do exactly what you're asking it not to. That is, the background is intended to split in the middle and stretch apart. That makes the background more useful across a number of monitor sizes.

The problem I'm having — and have effectively had for two or three days now — is that the PopCap designs you want are reallllllllly busy. So when they get split, you notice it. If you take a look at the background on this wiki, what you notice is that it's mostly black, with some simple geometric designs. Thus, when you widen your browser window, and the split occurs, you barely notice it.

The challenge — and one I'm continuing to work on right now — is how to build a background that uses familiar PopCap designs which fade into a solid background gracefully.

Honestly, the background is the hardest part of the whole thing. Because Bejeweled is by nature a very colourful, busy franchise, it is one of the most challenging topics I've ever had for background design.

Anyway, I hope you will now see that you have in no way been abandoned, and that great care is being taken to give your community a facelift of some quality.

And thanks very much for the Robot Chicken parody. That was pretty awesome! We'll definitely be able to use that over at w:c:tardis!