PublishOx is a pretty nice place to write & read, but there are still a few things that could definitely help improve the experience. Here are a few I've noted over the last couple of months.

Some of them are kind of major, some of them are smaller annoyances, but as someone who has spent years building user interfaces and experiences as a web & software developer I feel some level of qualification in pointing these things out.

Edit history

In February I somehow lost the entire content of a post, and for anyone who has read my brutal crypto game reviews, let me tell you they are not quick to write.

The research phase alone can take a few days, during which I take notes in point form. I then turn my notes into a first draft over the course of a day or two (usually around 3-4 hours solid writing, rearranging, and adding the colourful flourishes to my language that everyone so loves), and then another 1-2 hours of revision work after at least a day of not looking at it to make sure it still entertains me when I read it.

I lost that post at the end of my revision stage - I was within a few minutes of hitting that damn publish button.

I haven't rewritten that review yet, or even started researching a new one, because losing it was a heavy blow. I put a lot of energy into those reviews and it is not a nice feeling to lose even just one.

So how about an edit history?

I know that storage is one of the more expensive things for a site like this, but we don't need a comprehensive edit history - even just a single level of backup would have saved me in that situation.

A more consistent user experience when creating new posts

When you begin writing a new post you have no ability to preview what you are writing. The only button you have is "Save & Return to Overview".

Once you are back in the overview however you have the ability to preview it by clicking on the title.

But as soon as you add a cover image to your post you have the "Save & Preview" button.

I really don't understand why you can't preview from the editor before adding a cover image. The layout of the post/preview page already handles no cover image just fine, so "Save & Preview" should always be available to an author instead of forcing us to go back out to the overview then previewing, which makes for an awkward user experience.

Read time calculation before you publish

Once you hit the "publish" button there is that handy little thing that tells people approximately how long it will take to read.

But why can't we as writers see that before we press publish?

That would be a useful tool for helping authors know just how much we have written, because sometimes it is not quite apparent in edit mode where font size is smaller (~75%) AND available column width for the text is larger (~152%).

Our only way to see right now is to preview and guess, and based off my previous point, if we don't yet have a cover image uploaded previewing takes more clicks than it should.

Comment history

Let's say I comment on someone else's post, someone replies with something of interest to me, but I forget to note that thing down. But now I really want to find it!

The only way I can do that is remembering well enough what the post title and/or content was to hunt it down using a search, or remembering who the author was to find the post (and please don't tell me I should be following them, see my next point - plus I do have a habit of commenting on things I wouldn't follow).

If we had a page that showed us our comment history it would be so much easier to do this.

Following blogs, not authors

This is probably my biggest issue with the platform as a consumer of content.

I have followed a grand total of one author so far, who made two posts on a topic I was very interested in, but has now been MIA for 2 months. So really I'm not following anyone!

Why only one?

It isn't for lack of content I want to follow, but because of how much more content there is I don't want to follow at the same time.

I see a lot of authors who have one blog that is of interest to me, but their other blog(s) do not interest me, and their other blog(s) usually have more frequent posts.

A better way would be to enable users to access only the content they want, without sifting through the piles of content they don't want, by allowing us to follow blogs and not just authors.

So there we have it (for now).

What are everyone's thought on these suggestions?

All feedback is welcome - in my opinion specifying features in a collaborative, community effort always creates a better product!