Updating RubbishTimes.com
This week I refreshed RubbishTimes.com, I’ve been using it for months as have some family but no one else, thought I’d tidy it up and try get some users.
I gave the design an overhaul, it was a dark design but thought it would be friendlier if it was lighter and had some colour. I got some good feedback which highlighted some issues with the landing page, some copy needs to clearer, what it actually provided and how it does it, as well as some changes I could make to get more signups.
Oh it’s now built using HTMX as well, it was a sveltekit app originally and all the logic was one page which is why I thought I would redo it in HTMX, it’s much easier to understand what’s going on. I also added some much needed test to the notification logic, it’s parsing strings and date math so this gives me some cover when I’m making changes, this now all runs the test and deploys via a GitHub action.
I also added an admin portal I can run locally and check that everything has ran as expected in case anything breaks in weird ways, I have cronitor that will monitor that the jobs are running correctly and if anything fails send me an email.
There’s definitely more features I could add
- ability to specify a message delivery time
- Would need to add user accounts
- Whatsapp messaging
- Add phone call messages for those that don’t do messaging
There are a few recurring patterns I’ve noticed when using hono and htmx, I’d like to create a cli tool that can generate a scaffold app with routing and some middleware already setup.
