Vision
It’s time to discuss vision. No, not the Marvel character (well, maybe in another post, he is pretty interesting). Instead, it’s time to lay out my overall vision for what mmcd.io will be. In my information architecture post, I was very focused on version 1.0 of the site, but the vision for the site encompasses both short and long-term goals.
After thinking about it, the vision became surprisingly clear: I want this to be my home on the web. Between the various social media sites, side projects, discord servers, etc., it can all be a bit overwhelming. Those things won’t go away, but I need a central spot to fully explore what I want to explore, one that I’m in control of.
I discussed my old Xanga site in my first post, and how much fun I had writing for and working on that site. That was the first time I felt like I had a home on the web, and nothing has ever quite captured that magic (though Myspace did get pretty close). For years, I’ve felt like a digital nomad.
The vision of this site is simple: this is my place on the web. This is my weird little corner of the internet where I can experiment with ideas, write about whatever I want, and launch projects just because I want to. I really do hope that people will visit the site and find it useful, but as long as I’m enjoying the journey, this site will be a massive success.
Now that I’ve covered the overall vision, I’d like to offer a sneak peek at some of those weird ideas I mentioned. Some might seem out of date or out of touch, but I’m looking forward to experimenting with all of them.
Vibes
When you walk into an empty house, it’s just a building. However, little details can turn it into a home. Those little details, from the way it’s decorated to what’s typically playing on the TV, add character and make it feel like a home.
In my opinion, the web felt this way for a long time. In recent years, I feel like that aspect has been missing from websites. A large percentage of web traffic is now concentrated across a few specific sites, and the design cues from those sites seem to trickle down to smaller sites as well. Sometimes, this is a good thing. Other times, I’m not so sure.
I’m not advocating for a return to the days of songs auto-playing as soon as you load a webpage, but I do want my site to feel different. I want to capture that experience I had when I first browsed the internet (usually for information about Dragon Ball Z or video games). It might sound silly, but each new site really felt like a portal into another world.
I’ve been missing those days, and it seems like I’m not alone. There are articles reminiscing about GeoCities, Bulletin Board Systems, and even somewhat niche destinations like Square’s PlayOnline. With that in mind, there are some things I’d like to experiment with adding to the site:
- Interactive controls to adjust the experience to your taste
- Dark mode/light mode options are the most obvious, but I’m curious what else I can come up with.
- Music made for this site
- Don’t worry, it’s not going to play automatically, but I’d like to experiment with this.
- Environmental ambience
- This one is pretty vague, but I want to implement something that makes the site feel a bit more tangible.
- Useful tools
- Another vague one, but having a tool people want to use and interact with would be a very cool addition. There is one catch—it needs to fit under the umbrella of this site, and not be so big that it becomes a separate project. That is a tough needle to thread.
The road ahead
Now that I’ve covered all of that, one question remains: what’s next?
This isn’t the end of my posts about building a site, but it will no longer be the sole focus of my blog. It’s time to start implementing the ideas I have, but it’s also time to start covering other topics. Going forward, I’ll make sure to give these posts a category so that it’s easy to find the entire series (this will retroactively apply to posts as well).
In short, this is what’s next: it’s time to build, time to write, and time to achieve the goals I’ve set.
It’s time to get to work.