Behind the scenes journey: This first steps
Upon request, we are starting a new series about how it's to create and build a website
This isn't the first time we show behind the scenes, but this mark the start of us making this to an actual series that we plan to update frequently
Why did we start?
To be honest, bonty.net was never going to be what it is today. Originally this was going to be our company domain and the plan was to develop different services. If you look up our domain, you'll see it's been around for a long time. Just never used much publicly, mostly just internally
Then a worldwide pandemic came around and just as most of you, we were stuck inside. We already had the CMS (Content Management System) engine we built for other projects and had this domain. So decision was made to let's transform the site into a hub where one can find useful guide, news and interesting articles
Preparation phase
We then started adjusting our CMS engine for what we wanted the site to be. As we made it module based, it didn't take too long to add the features we wanted
Most time was spent on the design parts, which aren't our strongest suite. At one point we decided on a go live date and decided no matter the state of the site, that's when we go live
Which was probably on of our smarted decisions or this product could quickly ended up in development hell, as we'd always find something to improve or add. Sometimes you need to find a point you're ready enough
Doors open to the public
April 3rd, 2021 we opened our doors to the public for the first time and we were constantly adding new features and polishing in the beginning. At first, our CMS engine only supported one image per article. As this wasn't a feature that was needed for our other use cases, so we had to rapidly add this feature or the articles would feel bare
The first year we also did daily updates, including news. Which we later have slowed down on and discontinued respectively. We decided we'd rather spend time on good value articles abs guides, instead of just covering news you can read everywhere else
With the discontinuation of news and pandemic restrictions slowly lifting, we didn't find it as feasible to update on a daily basis anymore
What's next?
The site was created for us to have something meaningful to do during the pandemic. We currently have enough readers, so that the site is about self sustainable (besides salaries) and don't plan to end it anytime soon
We are developers at heart and are working on other projects. One of we hope to release within the year to make homelike easier
Tags: #bonty
