When I launched WDiL earlier this week I knew that it was what might be politely described as a MVP. And while I like SimpleCSS it doesn’t make for the most attractive sites. Therefore, I set about making it more appealing while also adding more functionality.
Moving from Simple CSS
I spent quite a bit of time looking for a pre-built theme that I could use as the basis of WDiL but none seemed to be where I wanted to go. In the end, I plumped for vanilla Bootstrap which with its pre-built components allowed me to get a quick start to a more attractive-looking site.
Using Bootstrap also brought some other advantages in that it is fully mobile enabled and allows the user to quickly switch between light and dark modes. Bootstrap also allowed me to swap out the table of activities on the home page for a card for each one which was something I’d always intended to do.
That done it was on to…
New Functionality
Ever since the first release, I have been making improvements pretty much every single day. A fact borne out by taking a quick look at my GitHub commits:
Let’s take a look at what has been included in this latest release:
- choose the trigger date and time
- delete a trigger from the stats page if you enter it incorrectly
- trigger from the stats page as well as the home page
- archive old activities and hide them on the home page
- group activities by assigning them a colour
- page showing statistics across all activities
- lots and lots of bug fixes!
If you want to download the latest code head on over to the GitHub page.
Why not Commercialise it?
You may be wondering why I have released this as open source rather than hosting it and allowing access on a subscription model that is so popular these days. Firstly, this is something I wrote because I wanted it and so I have achieved my ultimate goal I don’t need anything else from it. Secondly, the thought of supporting users, responding to their questions and demands for updates doesn’t excite me one bit. So I am happy for others to take this and make of it what they will.
What’s Next?
Good question. Well, I’d like to add some graphs, although I am struggling to figure out what might be useful at present. More likely are email reminders to let you know when an activity will soon be due.
Beyond that, I think that WDiL is functionally complete so most likely I will move on to the next project which is going to be Raspberry Pi based. However, if you have any ideas either get in touch here or raise an issue on GitHub.
