Learning centre, rebuilt from the decisions up

One pick per question. Options tagged live are what's on the site today, prototyped are clickable right now, built exist in uncommitted code. Note anything, picked or not. Star every combination worth building.

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1 · What's the canvas?

The tonality every page sits on.

Warm cream

Cream field, lilac panels. Today's tonality.

Cream + white cards

Cream field, white cards, lilac demoted to hover. Calmer.

Paper white

White, black type, purple only where it acts.

Lilac wash

Lilac field, white cards floating on it.

Purple-forward

Bold purple hero band, quiet body. Most branded.

2 · How is the content organised?

The IA underneath everything. Changing this changes URLs.

Five courses

5 × 5 lessons, a curriculum with an order. Today's IA.

Courses + setup path

Keep the five courses, add one guided "first login to first invoice" path.

Flat guides + topics

No courses. 25 task guides on flat URLs, six topic hubs. Needs 301s.

Role tracks

Solo / group / joining a team. Same lessons, different subset.

3 · What greets you on the home page?

First screen, first visit and every visit after.

Course shelf

Hero, one CTA, five course rows. What's live today.

Search + setup panel

"Get the job done." Search, popular tasks, then a setup path panel.

One next thing

A single card: your next lesson. Everything else is one quiet link.

Journey line

All 25 lessons as one path, your position obvious at a glance.

Pure search

Search is the whole home page. Answers over curriculum.

4 · How is a lesson shaped?

The order of the blocks on the page people actually use.

Article + rail

Sidebar, article, then FAQs and links stacked after. Today's page.

Teach then check

Read the lesson, then answer two questions at the end. Build 1's order.

Orient, do, verify

Outcome + product path, prerequisites, steps, "check it worked", then why.

Just the words

One centred column. No sidebar, nothing below but "next".

Step cards only

One step at a time, tap through. Paced, but more clicks.

5 · How does someone know they got it?

The active ingredient, if there is one.

Nothing

Reading is the product. No checks, no widgets. Live today.

Check it worked

Tick off the real result: right client, right items, email sent. Codex's idea.

Knowledge check quiz

Two multiple-choice questions, open book. 75 already written.

Do it in the app

The deep link is the whole point. No verification UI at all.

6 · What carries the teaching?

Words, moving pictures, or something between.

Words only

Text carries everything. Never goes stale. Live today.

Video on the big five

One sub-3-minute video per course's pivotal lesson. Text stays primary.

Stills + diagrams

Drawn, annotated illustrations of key screens. Cheap, ages slower than screenshots.

Video everywhere

Every lesson opens with a screen capture. Highest production + upkeep.

7 · How does progress feel?

What the site remembers, and how loudly.

Quiet ticks

Checks and small bars, celebration at the end. Today's model.

Setup path only

Progress exists for the new-customer path and nowhere else.

One thin line

A single hairline across the top of every page. Nothing else.

None

It's a reference, not a course. No state, nothing to finish.

8 · Where do the playbooks live?

The five long operating guides.

Poster cards

Five tilted colour cards under the courses. Today's placement.

Quiet list

A text list with read times. Reads as further reading, not a second product.

Black editorial band

Full-width black section. A deliberate gear change from the guides.

Go-deeper only

Reachable from related lessons only. Home stays courses-only.

9 · What happens when you come back?

The second visit is most visits.

Resume card

"Welcome back" + a continue card above the shelf. Today's behaviour.

Continue setup

The setup panel quietly becomes "Continue setup". Hero doesn't transform.

Straight back in

Returning visitors land in their next lesson, not on home at all.

Stateless

Every visit identical. The site never remembers you were here.

10 · How much chrome?

Nav, buttons, and how present the frame is.

Full nav

Search, help, book a call, log in. Today's header.

Reader mode

Chrome fades as you read; a floating pill holds prev / done / next.

Logo + search

Everything else moves to the footer. The page is the product.

App frame

Looks like Carepatron's app shell. Feels like a feature, not a website.

11 · How do you stop content going stale?

Pricing, plan gating and UI paths drift. Today this is a note in a handoff doc.

Nothing formal

Someone remembers to re-check. How it works today.

Verified date on page

Each lesson shows plan + "Verified 6 Aug 2026". Honest, zero machinery.

Volatility + CI gate

Each lesson carries a review date; the build warns or fails when pricing expires.

Link out for pricing

Never state a price. Point at the pricing page. Can't go stale.

12 · What is it built on?

An engineering call, separable from the design one. Costs are real here.

Keep the static renderer

Hand-rolled build, one content.json, S3 + CloudFront. 47 tests already green.

Keep, split the content

Same engine, but one markdown file per lesson instead of a 257KB JSON blob.

Astro + markdown

Typed collections, islands, Pagefind search. Kills the parity constraint; new estate.

Astro, keep AWS

New build system, same S3 + CloudFront estate Richard just stood up.

current build

Picks persist in this browser

Copy a starred build and paste it to me. That text is the spec: I prototype starred combos as real pages before any production work.