MaggieAppleton
commented
10 months ago Core features
Backlinks and forward links Visible links to all posts that link to this post, or are linked from this post We don't need to know if a link is back or forward
Explorable information architecture
Simple, clear design and readable typography
Flat URLs (garden.com/thing, not garden.com/posts/thing) URL taken from filename
Image optimisation
Rich metadata Type Growth stage Collections/tags Start date Last updated date Confidence? Importance? Assumed audience?
Pre-defined types Length changes how they're shown and previewed Macro Essays Notes Conference Talks Micro Micropost / twoot (280 characters) Books Questions Zettles/beliefs/claims
Able to reference other microposts / macroposts inline and see either full content or short preview (embedding other posts in your current post) These are fancy links Preview cards
Nice to have features
Support for lots of different media types – images, video, tweets, audio, sketches, code snippets
Collection pages All posts of X type with tag Y "Show me all notes related to gardening"
Version history on posts List of previous versions in sidebar Be able to view previous versions Use redirects to always send people to the latest version from simple urls. E.g. name.com/ideas -> name.com/ideas/v0 Canonical url always links to first version Doesn't go to the latest version On the first version we have a clear signpost telling them there's a more recent version Can link to a specific version name.com/ideas/v2 Have a flag in settings that lets you set whether canonical link goes to first version or latest version Implementation If a new version is added, add a redirect.
Popover previews on links Title, content preview, image preview, link count
Selective RSS publishing
Handy components for writing Two and three columns Quotes Table of Contents Code snippets Summary box / one-liner at the top References Images with flexible layout and sizing Sidenotes / Footnotes Proper references to source material (academic papers, books, links, etc) – more hidden, smaller, less obvious than sidenotes/footnotes Bibliography / Further reading and references
Good SEO
Search
Automatic published and last updated dates
Default page set: library, anti-library, now, uses, about
Accessible documentation for people who have never done web development before
Natural, woody themes All themes are natural neutral colours. Forest-like. Stick to the vibe. Dark green. Cool grey with white accents in the foreground. Warm light neutrals with brown accents (sand and wood). Maybe with green highlight accents
Luxury features
Language models as helpers or core features Probably better to tell people to just write in VS code and pay for Github Copilot?
Visual navigation of all content mapped with semantic relationships using LM embeddings
Multiplayer cursor presence (pointless fun)
Disable language models from scraping the site We could always set our robots.txt file to prevent being scraped, but I assume that also murders SEO. This might be a feature rather than a bug for some people. "The robots.txt file acts as a way for website owners to control which parts of their site can be crawled by search engine bots and other automated systems."
OpenAI have provided a way for you to block the GPTBot crawler from scraping your site: https://platform.openai.com/docs/gptbotWebmentions comments and likes
POSSE syndication to Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc. with Brid.gy
Webrings Blog roll, people you recommend
Documentation on how to design your own content types and their constraints
Historical trails / breadcrumbs You can see a trail of which posts you’ve already looked at. Like Andy’s trail of notes, but more subtle. Maybe as dots in the top left / centre top / left docked. Allows you to explore without worrying you’re going to lose what you’ve previously seen. Lower risk of loss.
Theme adjusts based on reader's current time We’re not having some dumb light/dark toggle. It shifts from daylight to twilight to dusk to night slowly. Soft gradients. Matches the users time zone. Owner controls it, not the reader. Although doing this makes images tricky - transparent PNGs could become hard to see.
What's absolutely essential – you couldn't use Arbour without it?
What can we save for future versions?
Break core features down into which ones we should implement first, second, etc.