I think it's time I start doing weekly review posts about the website—not for you, but for me. I'm pretty sure I’m the only one paying attention to the posts in the website category of this site, and that’s okay. Posting here acts like a diary, giving me a timeline I can look back on later. I usually work on my websites from Tuesday through Friday, so a Friday update would be fun to reflect on down the road.
As a joke, I built a fake tip page. I haven't actually used it yet, but I imagine it’ll be fun for when you're somewhere, and they spin an iPad around asking for a tip while some kid looks away and says, "It's going to ask you a quick question." You can have this page ready to turn the tables on them. You can find it in the menu at the top of the page or by clicking here. Hit the full screen button and flip your phone sideways. All of the buttons are dummy buttons, so feel free to mess with your servers or friends using it.
As I've mentioned before, the admin panels for my websites are turning into beasts of their own. This week, I spent a good chunk of time working on the Stellar History backend. I've been keeping the backend code for that site and Wisedocks separate for quite a while, and most of my time is usually spent on Wisedocks. As a result, Stellar History has been a bit neglected, but I managed to bring it up to speed this week.
I also got the search functionality built and implemented on Stellar History, although there are still a few tweaks I want to make. Search has been at the top of my to-do list for both sites for quite some time. Since Stellar History has a less complex database, it wasn’t as difficult to implement as it’s going to be for Wisedocks. For that reason, I haven’t started on the search function here yet, and I don’t foresee it being used in any meaningful way at the moment. Not to mention, Wisedocks is more of an experimental platform right now, with features coming and going so often that the search would constantly break. I think I’ll wait until I settle on a final format before I cross that bridge.
I was hoping to finish the "Lost in Arkansas" story this week, but it didn’t pan out. I did manage to write chapter 6, and I’m planning for about 10 chapters total. I think I spent more time writing articles for Stellar History this week, which is a good thing since that site has really been taking off lately. I might start focusing more on pumping out articles there.
For the second week in a row, I fired up the code for the recipes on Wisedocks, stared at it for about 30 minutes, and just couldn’t bring myself to work on it. I’m still debating how complex I want to make it. If I scrape the internet for recipes to display here without all the popups and junk you find on other sites, it’ll need to be fairly complex. But if I just want to share my own recipes, I can avoid all that hassle. The bigger question is: "Do I want Wisedocks to be a social platform or just a personal website?"
Part of me wants to keep it personal, sharing things I like. But it’d also be fun to turn the site into a useful tool for others. I tend to take the path of least resistance, so it would be easier to keep it as a personal site. If it gains traction with people, great! If not, no worries—this is my hobby. I enjoy coding and blogging, so why complicate things by inviting users who might interfere with my usual workflow?
Right now, I’m leaning heavily toward the personal route. I might let registered users opt in to email notifications for new content, and leave it at that. The shopping list feature will be pretty nice once it's improved, so I may keep that. I also plan to add comments to nearly all pages, but I’d prefer to restrict that to verified accounts to keep out the riff-raff. But who knows, I may change my mind later.
There’s also a lot left to do for user registrations. Currently, if all goes well, you can register, check your email to verify your account, and you're good to go. But I’ve barely tested the feature, and I’m sure there are bugs people may encounter. I’ll leave that for another day. For now, unless you want to use the shopping list feature, there’s no real reason to sign up. Everything else is available without registering.
So that's what I've been working on this week. Tomorrow; I'm back to the real world to pay some bills. If you've made it this far, why not stick around and check out the site. Find some quotes to share on social media, browse the AI art gallery, read some short stories if that's your thing, or leave the site if you hate your country. Whatever you choose, have fun!
