Just like the age-old axiom: “You never know what you have until it’s gone,” in programming and web design the more apropo phrase should be “You never know what you need until after you launch.”

Now, I’m perhaps the worst pundit of designing before creating (as I’ll delve into in another post) especially when I’m trying to learn a new system at the same time (as was the case with cakePHP and Ippatsu). However, I’ve noticed that even the most anal-retentive planners and system designers cannot foresee exactly what features and what data will be necessary for their users.

We can all make grand ideas about what would be a) cool to have or b) necessary for our users. But in the end, without actually having the system move, and have those desired functions come to the forefront, there’s really no way to figure out everything that you’ll need right from the get-go.

So, as I launched my site last week, and have finally started getting users coming in, I’ve noticed that there is some admin-only information that I really want.

1. User information pages — At current, I can’t see how many flashcards each individual user has, and what they’ve been doing lately. I can only see how many times each flashcard has been registered, but not by whom.
2. User login numbers — I currently have the login times of each user logged for security reasons, but it would be nice to also have the number of times each user has logged in. I could conceivably use this in the future for a “most active users” contest or widget or something.
3. Full news pages — My top news page only shows excerpts, much like my grammar article pages (because they use the same template) but since I’m planning on having a lot more consistent and necessary data on that page, I think we need to show the full news articles, or at least until the “More” tag.
4. A more complete messaging system — At current, I have a rather anemic messaging system that just logs a message to the DB with a topic, and who sent the message. I really need to pump that up a little so that I can have a full messaging system and then be able to extend that to the users.

So, within a week of opening, I already have a load of changes and fixes that to be perfectly honest, I should have had to start with, but never even noticed the need for.

Next time I’m going to delve into some programming issues, and talk about generating automatic sitemaps with CakePHP. Till then!

• Previous Entry: Harisenbon Speaks: Welcome to the blog!
• Next Entry: Simple Modal Boxes: FaceBox with Prototype