The new website build - the plans!

We’re working away backend here getting as much as possible ready for the new website - sorting pattern data, making sure every pattern text is edited, consistent and complete. Getting all of the images optimised and resized and relabelled. Collecting all of the URLs of every pattern on every platform. Considering which tags to use and collating the data around those but also sorting it in such a way so that we can add or change the tags. With a back catalogue the size of mine, this is no small task. I’ve got help, it’s not a task I could do alone. And I’m pretty excited about bringing all the data together like this - it’s going to make everything so much easier going forward.

We’ve a master spreadsheet that I’ve nicknamed the ‘monster master’ and looking through it and seeing it all come together is quite the incentive to keep going.

To clear something up - I sent out a newsletter to members of The Woolly Hat Society last week with an exclusive promotion to welcome in the cart. Some folks seem to have taken that to mean that this is the new website, and I want to reiterate that it very much isn’t! There’s lots of things I like about this website but there’s lots that needs changing, primarily the search function and the categories. So if you’re finding that something isn’t working for you, please leave a comment about what would work, but know that things are changing and will be improving.

So, the current plans.

The search function on this site is shite, but it’s a Squarespace feature that I can’t seem to do much to improve. I hate it. So, that’s going to be massively overhauled. I want to make it so that folks can search patterns via needle sizes or techniques - whether that be lace, cables, sideways or grafting. I don’t know yet just how refined I can make that search (I’m not the developer; you’ll be glad to hear that I’m hiring in a pro) but we’re doing the work backend to enable as much as possible. It’s definitely going to be searchable by pattern name and the categories I have now, which will already be an improvement on the current search feature.

How the drop down menu categories are presented isn’t set in stone yet, so we’ve some flexibility on that. I kinda think that the key construction techniques and yarn weights will be a firm fixture but I’m sure the developer knows ways of doing this that I don’t even know exist. One thing that’s always frustrated me with this website (and it’s the same with all Squarespace sites) is the lack of nested folders - i.e. the menu navigation inside the drop down menu, or lack of - it means I have to present categories or groups of similar patterns in a pretty rigid format, and it also means I have to add each page to that categories menu manually. I’m looking forward to having this gone and something built to our needs in it’s place.

Another thing that I’m really excited about is presence of a forum. Our own forum! I’ve always wanted one, as I find them one of the most useful ways to provide pattern support, help folks with their knitting and keep our community connected. It’s a place to actually talk and have conversations. I’ve never had the skills to build one (or the option, with Squarespace) or the funds to pay someone to custom build something, and everyone always seemed to prefer using Ravelry. That’s all changed now and I do have the funds and we can build our corner of the internet just as we like it.

The forum will be connected to the account feature… and the account feature will be there as the cart feature will be have a massive overhaul. It won’t be me outsourcing the uploads to another service like I’ve always done. (I can’t even remember the name of the eCommerce plug-in that I used on my very first site, which was a Mr Site site, in the days before Ravelry existed - it’s been that long). Being VAT registered now has opened up more options for me but I don’t know just yet which payment processor options I have beyond Paypal.

And…. we will have our own online teaching platform. I’m proper excited about this! Not a platform that’s a plug-in or connected to Teachable or any other platform, but a way to take part in the online workshops I’ll be offering right here on the new site. Support will be available via the forum, you’ll be able to buy online workshops at the same time that you buy patterns or eBooks or anything else I’ll be offering (the great thing about moving away from a Ravelry cart is that I’ll be able to offer digital products that don’t fit the Ravelry database). I’ve had to delay launching my online classes for a few reasons (more than our fair share of technical difficulties coupled with the need to deal with the NuRav fallout) but I am really excited to bring in this aspect. The classes will have PDF handouts to go with the video classes; they’ll have subtitles and we’ll be offering them in a growing number of languages, too.

And following on from that, the new site will have a language toggle come search feature. One thing I’m keen to do is to make sure that when a language is selected, it doesn’t just translate the whole site… some platforms do this and it’s endlessly frustrating when folks buy my patterns thinking they’re in the language that the platform has auto-translated to, even though I add a note stating which languages they’re available in. So selecting a language will make the forum and blog posts and general information pages available in that language, but it will only bring up the product pages for products available in the selected language.

The translations have slowed since the start of the pandemic, partially because I’ve needed to be a little more cautious with the budget and move things around, and partially because time has taken on a whole other meaning to just about everyone. Understandably, working to a schedule seems even harder now that folks have more things to juggle and more needs to consider. But once the new website is launched I’m hoping to have the headspace to start outsourcing more and languages are a priority.

The other priority in terms of formats is screen-reader/large print formats. I’ve still more research to do on this but it is something we’ll be making space for in the new website so that once I can offer specific patterns that meet the requirements for each, they’ll be easily found.

OK, so there’s a lot going on! And mostly right now it’s about collating and organising the data so that it fits into various tag systems and is all searchable, edited and consistent. It’s not a huge mess but it’s a big back catalogue so even a small mess is pretty time consuming.

Now is the time for us to take onboard suggestions and listen to ideas, so please do let me know if there’s something we’re missing. Aesthetically we’ll be working with an accessible template and generally keeping within the same style as this site (colour scheme, graphics and such) but again, there’s room for change and getting things right before we get a month into the project is the way I’d prefer to go! We’ll be using Wordpress, and there’s so, so many options available to us.

So please do comment on features you’d like, concerns you may have. I’m getting professional help and they know more than I do, but I will take anything you have to say to them.

(I’m sure I’ve missed something - there are lots of plans, lots going on!)