Next week my new job starts, so while I still have some free time, I decided to finish my May-website-revamp by creating an automated dashboard for the homepage! It’s a pretty big project, though I’ve already implemented some parts of it. The funny thing about working on this website is: whenever I get an idea - no matter how difficult - I can’t do anything else until I implement it, at least half-assed. That’s why this May was so packed with updates.

I’ll make a separate site update post once everything is done and will write more about how it works. But for now, while I’m inspired, I just wanted to write about the bigger picture.

The main reason - besides being bored with the old homepage and never actually using it - is that I finally understood the beauty of automation. After setting up SSH and writing a few scripts to automatically dither and compress images, update timestamps, and similar tasks, I realized how much more I could automate - saving time for writing and creative stuff.

For now, I’ve built a simple part of the dashboard: site statistics. It’s generated with every build, so the data is always fresh. It looks something like this:

[ OK ] Site uptime:        492 days (since 2024-01-10)
[ OK ] Last updated:       2025-05-16  20:36
[ OK ] Total posts:        034  /  +009 last month
[ OK ] Micro posts:        008  /  +008 last month
[ OK ] Disk usage:         2.0 GB / 100 GB
[ OK ] Deploy size:        987M
[ OK ] Status:             I'm gonna get fired for wasting so much time on this lol

As you can see, I went with a CLI-inspired look. I think it's the best way to present data like this. It looks a little corny right now, but it’ll probably feel better after a few design iterations. I’m still thinking about what other stats I could add - if you have any ideas, please shoot me an email. Maybe a broken links checker? That’s something I struggle with during big updates like this one.

The second part of the dashboard is much harder. I want to create a script for a logging system that tracks my progress with running, reading, meditation, film & music logs - stuff like that. It sounds like too much, but after thinking it through, I believe it’s a solid idea. Why? Because I love data - it opens up so many possibilities.

Here’s a simple example: I have a favourites page, and I haven’t updated it once since I made it. Just imagine digging through a hundred entries trying to remember what you already added and what you forgot. With structured data, though, I could automate the whole thing - use a template to display your top-rated films/albums/quotes/trips/etc. I’m already logging all that stuff using services like Criticker or Goodreads, so why not bring it right here?

Another cool use case: you could auto-generate weeknotes with logs from the last 7 days - how cool is that? With data, there are so many things you can do (looking at you, big tech), so you can always find a use case that fits you. Just imagine how fun a yearly review would be.

And the last part is easy - just showing a few recent posts from the weblog/microblog, maybe the latest video. That’s like five minutes of work, but it’s still part of the whole dashboard idea.

Right now, I’ve already made scripts for adding different types of posts, building the site, dithering images, deploying it - and I’m currently working on the logging system. Since each object will be different ("book" might have 4 parameters, "run" might have 2, etc.), even making a demo is tricky. So I decided to plan everything on paper first before jumping into code. Because of all this, expect my homepage to change a lot next week. But it won’t break anything - just wanted to explain what’s going on before I change too much!