☁︎ What I did (TDLR)

• designing. designing. and more designing. Please look below to see a sneak peek of the site’s UI so far!
• an anonymous kiddo asked me to make it so that they could color a cat. i thought that was adorable, so the new pages are all cats.
• started to prepare lessons for the daycare section of the site.
• ignored my ask box for 2 months (i’m sorry, answers are now queued).
• there’s a new poll on the home page about the stories feature, just for funsies.

.-‘🚂-‘.ᯓᡣ𐭩

☁︎ the details

boom, here’s an image and a GIF of what the homepage of the site looks like so far!

i went on kind of a journey trying to figure out how much of the train theme to use and how much of the original rounded soft rainbow theme of this site to use. suddenly it struck me: who says trains can’t be rainbow colored? and thus, the rainbow colored train in the navigation bar.

Actually, i originally wanted to make the extendable sidebar be shaped like a train track, but it ended up being pretty awkward and impossible to pull off. maybe i’ll try again later as i work more on the design. then i tried to do the nav bar as a train track instead since i don’t have to worry about it expanding or anything… but that ended up being just as bad. well, i’m happy with what it ended up being, so it’s all good.

there are still some changes coming to the home page, i really want to emphasize groups so i’d like to add a tab in between the post form and the feed so that you can switch between feeds of different groups you’re in. but, that’s highly technical so wish me luck for pulling it off! also, i’m not sure if i’ll keep the story feature, it came with the code i was working from. does anyone use them? i never have, so it makes me worry it shouldn’t be there. there’s been a new poll with every other update, so i put up a new poll about it for fun, don’t forget to vote!

after everyone’s suggestions for lessons and some research of my own, i’m starting to get a clearer picture of what kinds of things to put in the daycare. i’ve decided to focus on lessons that have real world results that people can actually have, and lean away from mostly theory. so, i guess “projects” is a better word than “lesson.” and, there are projects for just about any subject, from art to science to making homemade toys, so doing it like this still allows for a lot of variety in the daycare. i figure for the debut of the site, i can just borrow some ideas from an activity book for kids? (joking!)

sorry for ignoring my inbox, everyone! now i’ve got answers all written and queued to my Tumblr. i’ll also answer the questions here on the site and queue them to go up on my Tumblr as well so that more people can see ’em. but, there’s a lot more on this site, so please allow me to do them tomorrow since i’m almost out of free time to work on this for today.

it’s only been… 8 days since Valentine’s Day. so valentine’s cats are fine for this month’s coloring pages, right? ;-; it’s all cats because someone sent in an ask about wanting to color a cat. your wish is my command, anonymous kiddo!

please don’t hesitate to comment what kind of pages you want next, actually it makes it much easier for me in choosing new ones to swap out with. and tag me in your work or post it to my Subreddit! i’d love to see ’em. ^_^

.-‘🚂-‘.ᯓᡣ𐭩

☁︎ looking forward

focusing first on finishing the first draft of this UI! it’s pretty much done, but i want to polish up some menus, get the colors just right, and work on a dark mode before moving on to the next task. the next task being: the daycare section! once i have the list of projects that are going to be on the site at debut, i’ll share it with you all for review. feel free as well to comment any fun projects you did or wish you did as a kid for me to consider adding! i still plan on trying to make it so that users can add their own lessons as well, but i want as many as possible already there to begin with so that the site isn’t boring for new users.

.-‘🚂-‘.ᯓᡣ𐭩

☁︎ How I’m doing

so much better than i was at the end of last year! i’m settled into my new place, i got an adorable pet cat named Izzie, and the site is coming along smoothly. what’s not to be happy about?