By Like the new look? It’s a brand new theme for Mario Party Legacy! And yes, back when I launched the previous theme in 2020, I said it’d be the last one I work on. Things change! And I think you’ll be happy with some of the direction of this new update.
The blue shades and stripped patterns should feel familiar to anyone that has previously visited the site before, but there’s a more structural revamp happening too. Restructuring navigation and improving sitewide responsiveness are both core pillars of this refresh, and I think you’ll see how those two main factors tie into the changes I’ll outline shortly.
What you’re seeing now is the initial launch of the revamp, or Phase 1, as I’ve been referring to it. It started over a year ago with a few basic PHP files and some light HMTL, and I’ve slowly pieced bits and pieces together in my spare time to finally get it functioning to point ready for the public. There are some neat features I have planned for a Phase 2, and I’ll touch on what’s possible after our Phase 1 recap. A quick look at the old theme against the new theme:
So, what’s actually new? Let’s dive in!
Main Navigation
Guides, Games, and Features. If you break down where a page on our website should live, it will almost always fall under one of these three pages. These three links lead to hub pages breaking down where you can go — from our latest walkthroughs to detailed game overview pages for each Mario Party game.
Understanding where you are on the website, and knowing where you can go, is a top priority. I’ll be the first to admit that this has not been a strong point for the website in the past. It was quite disorganized, really. It’s one of the main reasons for kicking off this revamp project, and it’ll continue to be a primary factor in future decisions.
The Forum is an essential part of our website, and not just because of our extensive archive of discussions. The custom board and event scene with PartyPlanner64 is still active, and having quick and easily available access to the database of custom content is important.
A few other pages, like our contact and history pages, would fall under an About section. Since it wasn’t a crucial part of our hierarchy, those pages can be found in the footer alongside our social media links. News posts are also excluded from the main navigation, but you can find them all by heading over to homepage.
Listing all the Mario Party game number icons was staple of the site for many years, but it didn’t make the cut. Hopefully our new Games page can help smooth over some of that loss.
Sidebar Menu
Again, the navigation needed a major overhaul. Before the revamp, the sidebar menu offered a static set of menus that linked off to our most popular guide pages, some legacy content, and our social links. With our new theme and configuration, pages under Guides, Games, and Features will all have their own unique sidebar menus that update dynamically the farther you travel within a section of pages. For example, if you’re checking out our Paper Mario: The Origami King guide, every page you visit under that guide will have a specific menu that only appears for that game. Looking at Mario Party 7? That’ll have its own menu too. Cool feature, but do note that mobile doesn’t have the space to feature these menus.
Adding these unique menus is a manual process, so most pages do not have this functionality yet. I’ll be working on creating these menus in the coming weeks. For now, you can check out our Super Mario 64 guides page for a look at how it functions.
Breadcrumbs and Mobile Menu
More navigation! And a new feature. At the top of all pages (that are not news articles) is an additional way to track where you are on the site. Our breadcrumbs menu leaves a trail of how deep you’ve gone through the hierarchy. They’ll look something like this:
Guides > Super Mario 64 > Cool, Cool Mountain
This is an especially cool addition as our mobile menu is a bit barebones at the moment. Ideally, the mobile menu would allow you to travel to any page on the site, but for now it will simply have to link to the four main navigation links. But the breadcrumbs are a great alternative for now!
New Logo
It’s hard to miss, but we have an updated logo! The font and styling remains largely the same, but the coloring has been altered to better reflect the blue backgrounds of the theme. Previously, it would blend in a bit too much, so this lighter color scheme helps make the logo stand out.
Homepage and Featured Posts
The homepage serves the same function as before, but now it’s a little sharper and more conscious about the space it uses.
Notably, we have a new featured posts section just before the list of latest news articles. We’ll use this space to highlight three articles or pages. One of these spots will be saved for website revamp updates — more on that in a bit.
Featured Image
Throughout our entire 17 years on the net, we haven’t had a great way of showcasing each page’s featured image. That changes with this update! Each image is prominently featured at the top of each page, and the image will respond to any changes in the page size.
Because this is a new feature, lots of our older pages will continue contain duplicate images as we previously included our featured image within the page itself. I’ll be removing those images from our most prominent pages, but many will remain for now.
Guide and Game Pages Revamped
Our three pages in the main navigation are crucial for getting users where they need to go, so each of the three pages (Guides, Games, and Features) have received an uplift that lists every main page in a sleek new way. These specialized blocks are responsive too, so the mobile experience should be just as smooth.
I’ll continue to tinker with these pages as the rest of the website is brought up to date, so keep an eye on these!
Our Features section is a bit lacking at the moment, but it will also recieve a visual update once we start bringing in new additions during Phase 2.
In-Article Styling
Eventually, you’ll start to notice content styled or sectioned off in visually new ways. I’ve only had time to update a select few pages with these new styled options, but rest assured that I’ve worked on and tested several of these in my local build of the theme. Here a few you can expect to see pop up in the near future:
Phase 2
A lot of Phase 1 brought in features that set the foundation for not only a new theme, but for cool ideas in the future. I’m not ready to jump to these just yet, but know that I’m interested in bringing these features and concepts in a potential Phase 2:
- Updated mobile menu with complete
- URL path restructuring (to match our three main pages)
- Updating each guide with new in-article styling
- Update each Mario Party game page
- Additional child pages for each game (modes, items, etc.)
- Individual pages for boards and minigames using custom post types
- Features utilizing reusable custom board and minigame post types (rankings, lists, etc.)
- Board and minigame rating system
- Question of the Day integration via Discord
- And a lot of backend cleanup for faster load times and sharper functionality
I’m not going to make a new article every time I update a page or add a feature, but I will start cataloging changes in a Forum post. There’s also a separate Forum post for providing feedback or reporting any bugs, but feel free to share your thoughts in the comments of this article too. Lots to be excited about, and I hope the wait was worth it!
