User:Niharika (usurped)/MediawikiHomepageRedesign

Contact Information
Name: Niharika Kohli

Email: niharikakohli29@gmail.com, Available to chat on GTalk

IRC Handle: Niharika or Chocolava

Location: New Delhi, India

Typical Working Hours: GMT+5:30, free to work during the day for most of the days in the internship period. Typical working hours, 5PM to 1 AM.

Synopsis
This project deals with revamping the mediawiki.org homepage and giving it a new look and feel. There is a need to highlight and reflect newer projects undertaken by the community and the progress being made. The homepage of the Mediawiki.org has to be distinguished from the rest of the website.

Currently, the homepage is mostly text-based, with very little icons/visual content. It does not accurately reflect what Mediawiki is all about. This project aims to change that and bring the website homepage design at par to other open source websites.

Deliverables
Project timeline: December 10, 2013 - March 10, 2014 * Subject to mentor's approval
 * 1) Target 1: December 10 to December 15
 * 2) * Familiarize myself with the front-end code and html, css, javascript files.
 * 3) * Discuss with mentor and finalize upon what all changes need to be made on the homepage.
 * 4) Target 2: December 15 to January 30
 * 5) * Implement the language picker*
 * 6) * Make a better header, highlighting the basic functionality of MediaWiki*
 * 7) * Implement a Download button within the header itself*
 * 8) * Improve upon the homepage colors*
 * 9) * Align the columns properly and make the News column scrollable*
 * 10) * Make a navigation bar under the header and remove the left panel from the homepage*
 * 11) * Attempt to introduce as many changes from here as possible.
 * 12) Target 3: January 30 to February 30
 * 13) * Work on the feedback from my mentors and community
 * 14) * Testing on all major browsers
 * 15) * Bug fixes
 * 16) * Working towards a responsive design which will eliminate the need for a mobile website*
 * 17) * Improving the mobile website*
 * 18) Target 4: February 30 to March 10
 * 19) * Clearing up code
 * 20) * Final testing

Here is the link to the Microtasks.

About You
I am Niharika, a third year undergraduate from the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University of Delhi. I am majoring in Information Technology. My key areas of interest are algorithmic programming and web design. I am proficient in C, C++, Python and web technologies, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I developed a web-application as part of a team in a summer workshop in my sophomore year. It can be accessed here: http://rk-labs.dyndns.org:8080/webDesign/home.html

I'm new to open source and this project seems like an ideal starting point for a newcomer like me. It'll give me a much-needed exposure to open-source programming. I hope to learn a lot from my mentors and peers and take back a lot from this experience. I also hope to continue contributing to Wikimedia and other open-source projects after this internship.

Past Open Source Experience
I am new to open source and this will, hopefully, be my first project for an open source organization. I'm looking forward to working for open-source organizations in the future.