Section Tools and Customization

[Hooded Pitohui]

The 'Shroom strives to provide its writers with a wide variety of tools that can be used to enhance and customize their sections beyond what's possible through basic wiki markup. Through templates, background customization options, and more, we want to give writers as much control over the look and feel of their sections as possible. In this thread, you'll find a centralized overview of the tools you as a 'Shroom writer can use to customize your sections a bit beyond standard wiki formatting.

Follow these links or scroll down in the thread to find out more about the tools available to our writers.

• Templates
• Backgrounds
• Alternate Typefaces
• JavaScript

Sensible Use

All of these tools can have a powerful effect on your work and leave an impression while enhancing your sections if used skillfully. For instance, a Fun Stuff section can be made more directly interactive through use of a JavaScript tools, and a Fake News section or a Palette Swap section with a narrative could use an alternate typeface for a single passage to evoke the idea of reading a handwritten note.

Unfortunately, however, overuse of some of these features can also strain a reader's attention and make a page look unfocused and confusing. Using these features without careful consideration may also detract from a section's quality and become a distraction. Therefore, we ask that you use these features sparingly, and that you carefully consider whether what purpose they serve in your section. Use them to evoke a certain feel or mood, or to achieve a particular goal with your section, not as a way of making your section stand out. Clear purpose, good organization, and focused writing will always go further in making your section stand out than any of these tools.

In short: Only use these tools when you can answer what specifically they're adding to your section that can't be added another way.

For some of these features, like backgrounds, that barrier is low. For others, that should be a higher barrier to clear.

As with all other formatting elements, The 'Shroom staff is willing to help advise writers on the use of these tools. If you're worried that you've overdone it, or you aren't sure if a specific tool will work well for your section and you want a second opinion, feel free to ask a staff member.

We reserve the right to request that you change some of these formatting elements before we will publish your sections if they seem gratuitous, unnecessary, or otherwise disruptive to the general flow of a page.

 

[Hooded Pitohui]

Templates

We offer a variety of templates, some of which are pre-made tables that can be filled with information about a game/song/book/movie/etc. being reviewed, some of which allow for tightly-spaced images with captions in the style of a comic, some of which allow for a YouTube video to pop out and move as a reader scrolls through a page, among other functions.

If you have a question about using a template, ask us, and we'll assist you in learning how to use and fill out the template you've chosen, and let you know if the template works well for your section or if there might be a better one you can use.

Some templates which writers are most likely to find useful include:

• ShroomStrongContent
  • Goes at the start of a section if you want to warn readers about something within (e.g., spoilers, a controversial subject)
• Mediareview
  • A template for reviewing a generic piece of media, with a pre-made table with space for an image and basic details such as creators and release date.
• Moviereview
  • A pre-made table with spaces for information relevant to movies
    • Moviereview2
      • Alternate version without genre and ratings fields
• Tvreview
  • A pre-made table with spaces for information relevant to television shows
• Bookreview
  • A pre-made table with spaces for information relevant to books and graphic novels
• ShroomSong
  • A pre-made table which can be filled with information about a piece of music.
• ShroomCollapsible
  • Allows for collapsible boxes containing text and images to be put into a section
    • Boxes are always open on mobile or if JavaScript is disabled
• ShroomYoutube
  • Creates a link to a YouTube video that, when clicked, pops the video out in its own player that can move as the screen is scrolled
• ShroomComic
  • Tightly spaces images together and allows for captions to be added to one or multiple images, making a layout similar to a comic.

Suggesting Templates

If you have a sufficient knowledge of wiki coding, you are welcome to create and submit templates for your own sections. Do not make these directly on the wiki. Instead, create a draft, and contact a member of the staff. We will help you test it and get in place.

 

[Hooded Pitohui]

Backgrounds

For standalone special sections only, we allow 'Shroom writers to choose what background they would like for their section. They may choose a combination of one symbol and one color. The following options are available:

Symbols:

• Mushroom
• Star
• Super Leaf
• Super Bell
• Fire Flower
• Coin
• Music Note

Colors:

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Lime
• Green
• Cyan
• Blue
• Indigo
• Purple
• Pink

We do not offer this to sections that appear on a team page, because the whole page uses the team's background.

Suggesting Backgrounds:

You may contact a member of the staff with ideas for backgrounds, but we do not guarantee we will implement any given idea. If you are an artist and are interested in submitting a background to The 'Shroom, you may contact the Director, Sub-Director, or Graphic Design Manager and discuss the matter with them. Please note that we generally stick to a particular style for our backgrounds and they are made in the SVG format, so we may not be able to accept just any submission.

 

[Hooded Pitohui]

Alternate Typefaces

It is possible for writers to render text in different fonts and typeface through the use of wiki markup. Changing the typeface can be done like this:

<p class="font-FONTNAME">YOURTEXT</p>

Simply replace FONTNAME and YOURTEXT with the name of the typeface and the text you want to alter.

FONTNAME should be all lowercase, with no spaces.

Example:

Mario, please come to the castle. I've baked a cake for you.

<p class="font-courgette">Princess Toadstool</p>

At this time, these are the alternate typefaces which The 'Shroom supports.

• PT Serif
• Courgette
• Federant
• Press Start 2P
• Indie Flower
• Mochiy Pop One

Sensible Use

Again, we'd like to remind you to use these alternate typefaces sparingly. While the right typeface in the right moment may add to the impression of a character in a narrative section, or, if confined to headings, help to break up the section visually, overuse of alternate typefaces or rapidly jumping between them can quickly become disruptive.

If we feel your section's use of typefaces is disruptive, we reserve the right to request you change them before we publish your section.

Suggesting Typefaces

It is theoretically possible for us to support any typeface on Google Fonts, but for technical reasons the number of options has to be kept to a minimum. You may request the addition of more options, but please only do so if you think having a particular typeface available is important, not just to arbitrarily increase the size of the list.

The 'Shroom staff will review your request according to the following qualities:

• Readability: Text rendered in this typeface is clear and can be read at a glance.
• Uniqueness: This typeface has a distinct feel that cannot be accomplished by any of the other options.
• Versatility: It is possible to use this typeface in multiple different situations; it will not be relegated to a single use and then forgotten.

 

[Hooded Pitohui]

JavaScript Elements

JavaScript can be used to make possible a wide range of unique interaction on a page. These can allow for games to be played directly on a page, responding to clicks, or can be used to make elements on a page move to create, for instance, a slideshow. Some JavaScript elements are available to our writers. These include:

• ShroomSlideshow
  • Place images and text on a carousel with clickable left/right buttons that allow you to advance or return to the next/previous slide.
• ShroomCard
  • Define an entity made up of two entities that transition between one another through a flipping animation when clicked

Sensible Use

While having great potential, misused, JavaScript elements can be highly disruptive. Once again, we reiterate that it is important to carefully consider whether these tools enhance your section or not, and if there is another way of accomplishing the same thing.

JavaScript elements can have unintended interactions and side-effects, so they are best used sparingly. We reserve the right to ask that you alter or remove them if we find that they are disruptive. Because of this, if you are interested in using them, we suggest that you get a draft up well in advance of the deadline and allow your Team Director or another member of the staff to review and test your section. If a submission or an application includes JavaScript elements and we discover unintended, disruptive interactions with too little time to fix them before the next issue's release, we may delay your section by a month.

Additionally, not everyone has JavaScript enabled. Please consider fallbacks that might be displayed to anyone who may not be able to use JavaScript, and understand that if your section depends on it, there may be some readers who cannot fully enjoy your section.

Suggesting JavaScript Elements

We highly encourage you to consider JavaScript as an option of last resort, only to be used if all other tools available to you absolutely cannot achieve your goals for your section. However, if you have some JavaScript tool that you would like to use in your section that we do not offer, please contact the Director, Sub-Director, or the Programming Manager and inform them. We will need to thoroughly review any JavaScript to ensure it is functional and safe, as well as to hunt for any unintended interactions.

We highly recommend that you contact us well in advance of putting together an application, as there are multiple steps involved in reviewing these elements and ensuring they are working before an application can be processed. We reserve the right to reject any JavaScript tools put forward to us.

In these cases, your application may be subjected to an extended review. The process will take as much time as is needed to make sure your section is fully functional before it is published.