I have been wanting to relaunch the Digital Toolbox for Iranian Studies for some time now, but because of my job, which involves relatively long working hours, I don’t always have time to devote to my passions. In this blog post, I will describe the features I wish to implement over the course of 2025.
What are the requirements?
My focus is on user/reader experience, so as before, the website should have a small footprint, be as lightweight as possible, built for performance, speed and security.
This blog is built with WordPress, a content management system that has evolved a lot in recent years. To utilize the full potential of these changes, I need to either create a so-called custom FSE WordPress theme or choose an existing theme and heavily modify it. For this I have to learn how to use the JSON file format. For you as readers of the blog this will translate into many improved design options for the homepage, the toolbox itself and individual blog posts, as well as significant improvements in terms of the general performance and loading speed of the site.
My current todo list
- create a custom wordpress FSE theme from scratch or find an existing free theme to build upon. It should be lightweight, built for speed, performance and security, preferably no use of Java Script and as few plugins as possible
- create a more refined color palette
- optional dark mode to reduce eye strain
- improved support for RTL languages
- make a variety of new blog post templates
- restructure the homepage
- the entire website should scale user-friendly on all mobile devices
- font size should scale eye-friendly on various screen sizes
- create a database structure in JSON
- enter all toolbox entries into that database
- find a suitable frontend solution for the database that integrates well with the website and allows users to search, filter and sort the database results
- resume weekly updates to regularly add new entries to the database
- publish a monthly podcast digest
- a world map that pulls data from the database and displays interesting locations like important cultural heritage sites, musea, libraries, research institutes etc.
- an academic event calendar
- increase exchange with users by offering an online form for them to contribute to the Digital Toolbox (to submit their requests, feedback, critique, suggestions, corrections)
- and many more ideas…
The Digital Toolbox for Iranian Studies will always be ad-free and with as less user tracking as possible. I do not need and will never take any donations or other financial support from anyone, and I am not affiliated with any institution or group, not even a university. It’s just me, a geek that fell in love with Iran and its people.
What are your thoughts?
Please let me know what you think about this roadmap by leaving a comment below, via email or twitter. Your input is highly appreciated, it would really make my day to hear about your needs and ideas!
Kind regards,
Vincent
