It's been a while since I posted an update. Lot's of stuff is going on behind the scenes at the moment, including developing an advertising campaign, setting up a dedicated YouTube channel (where the Tutorial Videos will end up). The new dedicated YouTube channel can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@DearDiaryNet1999
I'm also in the process of starting some large backend rewrites. Yes, I know the code is literally only 2 months old, but the more I've worked with NextJS the more I realise some of my early assumptions were.... well.... Ass.
Anyway - I'm about to embark on another massive update to the theming system so that I can hopefully give you lots of great customization options in the future. But I fear if I do that with the way the current theming system works it'll just be horribly janky.
To explain, for those who have trouble sleeping, the current theming system uses the built in NextJS theme system with some modifications. NextJS renders pages in two ways - the first is that it produces a sort of 'skeleton' page on the server. For some pages, that skeleton is already fully fleshed and doesn't need anything more. But for others, it's literally a skeleton. That gets sent to your browser which then 'hydrates' the skeleton. It's a bit less macabre to say hydrate than 'adding the flesh' I suspect.
The theming system is all 'hydrated' by your browser. On a fast computer with a fast internet connection that works mostly OK. But on a mobile or a low-end device it produces some noticeable annoyances. The biggest of which is that the page looks like it's loading slowly while your browser figures out what theme to apply and then apply it. And sometimes, before it's figured out which one to apply it applies the default orange - and thus flickers from orange, potentially through the user chosen theme and finally settling on the diarists chosen theme.
For most NextJS driven websites it doesn't matter because there's literally only one theme and users can't change it. But we like to be different at DearDiary.Net!
Suffice to say, it needs rewriting 😀
So, stuff's still happening. I've not run off on you all 😜