The Larger Changes

A modern replacement to the gallery, Piwigo, is live. AI assisted in fully integrating the look and authentication from day one. This had been on my "to do" list for years, but I did not have the time to implement. Go live took less than a day. Within a week, the minor bugs were killed.

The new radar functionality was overloading the web server. When zooming and panning, the radar would hesitate and could take up to a minute to load. Working with AI, I improved efficiency in how the radar images load, what was cached, and web server configuration optimization. Radar panning and zooming activity now completes in 9 seconds. The order of loading makes it visually ready within 3 seconds.

The previous news feed changes added more articles, slowing page load. AI assisted by configuring the news articles to be edge cached (closest to the visitors) and properly staged. The staging is what hits the most. It limits initial page load to visible news and backfills for "search" after the page is displayed. Initial load is faster (95% less initial data) and backfill completes within a second. An improved experience with no observable cost.

The site UI has had enhancements: the header unlock option is gone after 20 years. Site logon is now in a dialog, more consistent and less congested. These changes provided space to reduce the header height, especially on mobile.

Ideas to Realities

Weather has had another overhaul, though less significant. Everything below the big graph can be moved. Positions are remembered per browser. A location header stays on top with the most important details. Have a large display? Up to 3 columns for viewing the data. A Hazards card added to show the most concerning weather conditions in one place.

The old Radar is gone. Only the interactive one remains. It has been optimized. On a cold load it is faster than the old radar. In addition to enhancing the touch and click performance, new map overlays of watches, storm prediction, smoke and fire, lightning, drought, rain, temperature mapping, and aurora reporting. The radar supports custom sizes now. Storm chaser information can be added. A satellite layer is also available.

The site has supported mobile device home screens (called a PWA). Now it also can send alerts. Add to your Home Page on iOS or Android, go into Weather Settings, and turn on the Alerts. Get notified for weather alerts in your area without going into the site.

Other updates... The additional news categories increased the amount of duplicate articles. I added a duplicate finder. It combines articles based on key word matches to minimize duplicate articles. Some still sneak by. Buttons and other controls have been refined and are more consistent everywhere.

These are changes that would have taken me months to do. Some of the ideas have been on my wish list for years. With the assistance of AI and a few weeks of my time, they are all fully implemented. There has been more custom work done on this site in the past 3 months than the prior 3 years.

When the Limitation Changes

As my comfort with AI grows, so do the projects I assign it. In the last week, AI has been adding features far faster than I ever had time to do in the past. The limitation is no longer my coding free time... it is now the ideas I have for enhancing the site. Every feature added required investigation and follow-ups before functioning as intended. I believe skill and know-how are required to validate that AI has not made a mistake. As AI often tells me: "You are right for saying that."

Weather: Added heat index alerts, wave forecasts - if you're close to a large body of water, 3 hr rain forecasts, allergy forecast, more precise caching - using the Location finder is more accurate than entering your city by name. An optional interactive radar adds full pan and zoom, higher resolution, and international support. Initial data loads are higher with the new radar. Incremental loads are smaller. Load the map one time, and only the radar data from that point on.

Site theme: All buttons and formatting have been aligned to make the different components on this site feel more cohesive than ever.

News: The backend function to add news feeds had been broken... now it works. It adds icons, allows for easy customization, has drag and drop to rearrange the feeds. The front end has a slider to determine how many articles to display, giving more granular control. I increased the news feed list from 24 to 48 hours, improving the amount of searchable news. 10 new technology-focused feeds were added to the news system. They are enabled by default. Click the Settings button to turn off any feeds you do not want to see.

When the limitation changes, so does the game.