1 Thing A Week 1 Thing
A Week

Two years of 1 Thing A Week A look back at the last year and a look to the future of 1 Thing A Week

Week 104.0 — 21st October '19

One hundred and four weeks in. 104. It was hard thinking about getting into double digits when I first started, but triple digits was a great milestone to hit.

Last year, I looked back at my favourite articles and the functionality I've added.

What's new on 1 Thing A Week?

  • The Market got a facelift
  • There are different types of Notable items now: links, pieces with commentary and embedded content (YouTube, Instagram, Twitter etc...)
  • You can now look at my favourite Notable items
  • The Notable archive got updated to be easier to navigate
  • The footer of each article will now show content from a year ago (where available)
  • Ads are in place (currently A/B testing in places)
  • Oh and a comprehensive rebuild (exactly 30 weeks ago)

Each of those changes has been in the interest of both performance and discovery. I've also been running regular link checks to make sure you don't hit a dead end.

Performance was improved in some places by rewriting chunks of the code, but in others it made sense to cache the content. I keep a copy of the page and serve that each time instead of rebuilding. A great learning exercise for me and 1 Thing A Week is a lot faster for it.

What does the future hold?

Iterating on 1 Thing A Week has taught me a lot and refreshed my mind on a lot of aspects of web development. I've also learnt so much about design and it's been an eye opener for SEO. Content should be king, but that's not how things work now so it's something I really need to figure out to help make everything more discoverable.

I have a bunch of performance improvements in mind and there are always going to be optimisations I can work on.

There are features I want to work on too, but for now I'm stepping back and focusing on content and there are real world projects that need my attention. When I do get back to it, the most pressing things I'll be looking into:

  • Most popular (by visits)
  • Introduce tagging for Notable items
  • Find an alternative to Google Analytics

The last is by far the most important, but the most difficult. I'm very tempted to build my own tracking tool. Maybe a project for 2020.

More from 1 Thing A Week
« Tesla Model S vs the Porsche Taycan 3 printed gifts football fans will love on Etsy The iPhone 12 is here and it's bringing MagSafe back! My Brexit despair »

Advertisement

Notable

Quick links and commentary on interesting articles, videos and more throughout the week.

  1. 104.1 – Monday
    1. Immoral Flaws martinfirrell.com
    2. "Selling my own damn data" @wired on instagram.com
    3. How 22 inventions are saving the Earth @engineeringvids on twitter.com
    4. Paul Rudd on Hot Ones First We Feast on youtube.com
    5. Samsung fingerprint bypass hack explained @iphonedo on youtube.com
    6. Silicon Valley season 6 trailer HBO on youtube.com
  2. 104.2 – Tuesday
    1. Build you own mechanical watch Rotate Watches on kickstarter.com
    2. Photographing the Microscopic: Winners of Nikon Small World 2019 theatlantic.com
    3. "American Son" trailer Netflix on youtube.com
    4. Virgin Galactic x Under Armour Spacesuit coolmaterial.com
  3. 104.3 – Wednesday
    1. Moons of Saturn Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL & NASA on apod.nasa.gov
  4. 104.4 – Thursday
    1. AOC vs Mark Zuckerberg @ladyhaja on twitter.com
  5. 104.5 – Friday
    1. Narrative illustrator Owen Pomery kottke.org
    2. Shinola Monopoly Detroit Edition   $395 blessthisstuff.com
  6. 104.7 – Sunday
    1. How this guy made the World's hottest peppers WIRED on youtube.com
    2. Bottle of The Macallan 1926 sells for record £1.5m bbc.co.uk

Jump to notable items for Week #103, Week #105 , view the notable archive or my favourites.

About 1 Thing A Week

A website curated by @cchana bringing you 1 Thing A Week, delivered every Monday morning.

You can find a list of all articles in the archive, or read the most popular.

Find out more about 1 Thing A Week or read the privacy policy.

Market

Visit the market and support 1 Thing A Week.

You can find 1 Thing A Week on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Reddit