This week has been packed with significant improvements and new features across the Aphylia platform. Our development team has been hard at work enhancing user experience, whilst our design team has made strides in refining our visual identity. Here's everything that happened this week.
๐ Development Highlights
New Blog Platform
We're excited to announce the addition of a dedicated Blog Post Page! This new feature allows us to keep you updated on website improvements and share insights into what we're currently working on. You'll now have a centralised place to follow Aphylia's journey and stay informed about upcoming features.
Performance Improvements
Speed matters, and we've been focusing on making Aphylia faster than ever. This week, we've made significant improvements to loading times across the platform:
Main page load times have been optimised
Garden loading is now noticeably faster
The Search Page has been redesigned to display 20 plants initially, with more loading as you scroll down โ this dramatically improves initial load performance
Discovery Page Fixes
We've corrected an issue where the Discovery section wasn't displaying the correct tagged images. The Discovery experience should now be more visually consistent and accurate.
Communication Features
Behind the scenes, we've been laying the groundwork for improved communication:
Email templates have been implemented
Campaign implementation has begun
These features will enable us to keep you better informed about updates, tips, and plant care advice in the near future.
Notification Preferences
We've added notification settings that give you full control over how we communicate with you. You can now easily opt out of promotional emails and phone notifications, ensuring you only receive the updates that matter most to you. Find these settings in your account settings.
Bookmarks Are Here!
You can now bookmark your favourite plants and content! This feature makes it easier to keep track of plants you're interested in or want to reference later.
Admin and Content Improvements
We've made Admin Notes global across all languages and kept them untranslated, ensuring consistency in internal documentation. We've also corrected UUID issues with Rose, Lavender, and another plant variety. Whilst this was necessary maintenance, we're keeping a close eye out for any potential bugs this might have introduced.
Enhanced Garden Management
Managing your gardens just got easier! We've added a convenient ADD button that allows you to add plants directly to your desired garden without extra navigation steps.
Expanded Plant Categories
Cactus and succulent enthusiasts, rejoice! We've added "Cactusโ and โSucculent" as dedicated plant types, making it easier to categorise and discover these popular plant varieties.
Security Enhancement
Security is a priority for us. This week, we've implemented ReCaptcha on the website to protect against automated abuse. Currently, it's active on signup and login pages, with accompanying text at the bottom of these forms. This helps ensure that Aphylia remains a safe platform for all our users.
SEO and Analytics Integration
We've taken a major step forward in understanding how people discover and use Aphylia. This week, we registered the website with Google SEO and Google Analytics:
Google Analytics: We now gather detailed insights about website usage, helping us understand how users interact with different features and where we can make improvements
Google SEO: Aphylia is now properly indexed and optimised for Google Search, making us discoverable when people search for relevant plant care and gardening terms
These integrations will help us make data-driven decisions about future features and ensure that plant enthusiasts can easily find Aphylia when searching for plant care resources.
๐จ Design Updates
Our design team has been working on vectorising the Aphylia logo in SVG format. This will ensure our branding looks crisp and professional across all devices and resolutions, from mobile phones to large desktop displays.
๐ Content and Plant Database Updates
Our content team has been busy expanding the Aphylia plant database with new plant profiles and corrections to existing entries. Here's what was added and improved this week:
New Plant Profiles
We've added detailed care guides and information for the following plants:
Radish โ A quick-growing vegetable perfect for beginner gardeners
Sorrel โ A tangy, leafy green with culinary and ornamental value
Caladium โ Stunning tropical foliage plants with colourful leaves
String of Hearts (Chaรฎne de Cลur) โ A trailing succulent with distinctive heart-shaped leaves
Begonia Rex โ Ornamental begonias prized for their decorative foliage
Plant Profile Corrections
We've also corrected and improved the existing profile for:
Amaranth Foxtail โ Updated information for accuracy and completeness
Welcome Email Testing
We've tested the welcome email template to ensure new users receive a warm, informative introduction to Aphylia when they join our community.
Looking Ahead
We're committed to continuously improving Aphylia and making it the best platform for plant enthusiasts. The foundations we've laid this week โ particularly around performance, bookmarks, and communication features โ will enable even more exciting developments in the weeks to come.
Thank you for being part of the Aphylia community. As always, if you encounter any issues or have suggestions, please don't hesitate to reach out. Your feedback helps us grow!
Happy gardening! ๐ฑ