Upgraded Website Infrastructures, Updated User Interface (UI), Bug Fixes and More
I am excited to announce major changes to the Donald Louch Website 🎉 From upgrading a number of my Website Infrastructures, to new User Interface (UI) changes, bug fixes and more!
Infrastructure Upgrades
Significant changes have been implemented within my website and how I develop and deploy it. To even implementing upgrades to surrounding services such as my email server.
Within my February 22nd, 2022 changes post, I had mentioned that I had started to develop my website with NextJS. This development with NextJS, was done through their Pages Router infrastructure. However, with NextJS' recently announced "Next Big Thing" 😉 which is their more server side friendly and faster infrastructure with their new App Router infrastructure. Which, allows for developers to develop websites with faster loads times even when there is a big amounts of data to be displayed and fetched. In addition, it allows developers to have a more consistent and easier way to navigate and organize their folder structures with things like nested layouts, and allowing for easy structure of components. With this, I have migrated my website to use this new infrastructure and have switched to using the new App Router infrastructure.
I have, further, changed my database infrastructure from using PlanetScale and Prisma to using Supabase for all my database fetching and storing.
Additionally, I have changed my authentication infrastructure from using NextAuth/AuthJS to now using Clerk.
I not only changed my website infrastructures but I have migrated my email hosting service from Zoho to Google Workspace.
UI Changes
I have made major UI changes. To start off, I have changed the light and dark modes, to a new consented hybrid light and dark mode which features a aesthetically pleasing purple colour scheme. which will make it easier to see content.
I have additionally, changed the sizing of the fonts to make it a little larger and thus, further, making it easier to see content.
I have made initial changes to my form sections with new layouts, in which, I can now display a description of the fields and provide further context or helpful formatting tips.
I have further began to refine a number of the edges on elements with changing their borderRadius values.
I have made other smaller UI changes to improve the flow of information and I will continue to always improve on the UI.
Bug Fixes
With the change to the new NextJS App Router it has allowed me to fix some bugs and make general improvements on speed, loading of items and content.