This article will be updated as new features are decided.
The LEGGO News website officially opened on April 19, 2020. We were eager to start creating content, so the entire website was set up in only two days. To achieve this feat, we used WordPress with a custom theme.
As needed, we continued to customize our website and added on to it over the following months. Recently, we are pushing the limits of WordPress, and it is starting to push back. It has served us well, but we need to invest into something better.
LEGGO News version 2 will be developed in 2021 with an expected release date in the later half of the year. It will be built from the ground up specifically for our needs — “our” is not just us at LEGGO News. We want to hear your suggestions too.
Public Features
Your Ideas Here!
If there are any changes that you want to see, let us know. Send us a message on our social media, or send us an email at news@leggonews.com.
Mostly the same look and layout
Unless we receive a lot of suggestions to change the overall theme of the website, it will mostly look the same. There will be small tweaks here and there, but we don’t plan to drastically change the look.
More detailed credits
Most of our articles are touched by at least two people, but only the author is listed. We are a team at LEGGO News, and we will better show that by listing everyone who works on an article and their role.
Comments on articles
We already have this feature, but we don’t use it. We don’t have the free time to moderate comments right now. We will keep this feature in version 2, because someday we might be able to responsibly allow comments on articles.
Fix page jumps
The calendar on the homepage pushes content down once it loads. Lazy-loaded images push content down when they load. Why can’t everything be the right size right from the beginning? It should. It will be.
Staff Features
The CMS, or Content Management System, is used by our staff to manage the content on the website. It will be completely replaced in version 2. The new one will be simpler and more streamlined.
Stories organized on a Kanban board
Stories have a natural progression from “the wire” to publishing. Kanban boards help to visualize work items at various stages. It’s perfect! Our stories and what needs done on each one can be seen at a glance with this better organization.
Article templates
As of December 28, 2020, we have published 300 articles! In our experience, certain types of articles have a similar structure. Using templates for common article types would let us use our time much more efficiently.
It would be useful for some information to be prefilled on these new templates. Video upload times, caption translations, EXID’s upcoming events, and article metadata are some examples.
Fewer settings
For every article, there are settings that are never touched. Elsewhere in the CMS, there are settings that are never touched. Why are they there? The new CMS won’t clutter the screen with settings that are never changed.
Technical Design
Most of the technical stuff won’t be seen, but it’s included here for completeness for those who are curious.
The new website will be coded from scratch in PHP. It will be separated into “Core” and “Website” projects. The core will tie the website together, enable us to use our chosen design pattern, and provide abstractions for easier unit tests. The website will use an MVC design pattern for the pages and API. Special features will be implemented via self-contained modules that are triggered through a messaging service (from the core).
The server will not be changed. It is a CentOS virtual server that is rented from Liquid Web. It has proven itself to be a great server, and it will be hard to find a better one.