7 Features I Want To Add My Site

Recently, I completed a really big milestone with this site, and actually ticked off the first of my goals for 2023. I have been meaning to learn server side JavaScript for ages, so this site is now fully built on an Express server, with server side rendering instead of client side rendering! This is a really big step for me to be able to produce full-stack apps so I’m naturally really excited about it. But it did get me thinking about my next few steps with my site, and what new features and functions I want to work on to progress my coding journey and also just make my site a bit cooler!

Dark mode

I cannot stress enough how much I love when an app has dark mode. Literally every product/app I have I turn to dark mode. So I am going to inflict that same passion onto everyone who decides to read my blog, and will be rolling out a dark mode toggle soon so you can enjoy my content in the same way as me, which I assume is your end goal?

Comments

Right now, my site is very “man ranting at a captive audience”, I’m aware of that. I built a forum app a while back where users (mostly me) can upload short snippets of text, very dumbly called MattChat because I took less time naming it than I do eating a sandwich.

However, I want people to be able to tell me how stupid my blogs and thoughts on the state of the world are more directly, so I’m going to work on adding a comment section to each blog post, so I can drive a bit of on-site engagement. 

Tag powered suggestions

Currently, my blogs are unorganised chaos that are a testament to the eclectic nature of my interests if you are being generous, and a symbol of deepening psychosis if you are being particularly ungenerous. I want to organise these blog posts with the use of tags, so that I can include a “check out similar posts” block so you can explore more of the ramblings that comprise this website.

Voting mechanisms

Ages ago (version 3 of my 5 versions of matt-bristow.com) I held a vote on the site for what my next blog should be about, tracking it through Google Analytics. I really want to get some of that functionality back so I can collect user sentiment on what I should do next, and then completely ignore it and do whatever I want.

Video

Have you ever been to a festival, recorded the artist and then listened back to the video and dissolved into a pile of ash because you can hear yourself singing in the video? That’s how I feel every time I hear my own voice in any capacity. But I want to challenge myself, get out of my comfort zone, and potentially kick off a multimillion dollar career as a Twitch streamer by uploading some video content to my site at some point in the future.

More API integrations

I used to have an API pulling in a fun fact on the homepage, which has since frazzled out during the Express rebuild, but I want to reintroduce some more fun APIs on to my website, especially the homepage, to liven it up a bit. Any suggestions are welcome!

More projects

I’ve always wanted to add more projects alongside my writing on the site, and I recently completed a new one. I built a Wordle clone for my girlfriend with Taylor Swift lyrics (I say it’s exclusively for her, I do try and get it right every day but no luck as yet, even though I built the bloody thing). There’s no rest for the wicked though and I have a really exciting project I’ve lined up to launch next so keep your eyes peeled!