Figure out how to make ordinals.com more appealing

[casey]

I'd like to get more users visiting ordinals.com, since I think it's good for a neutral index that isn't selling something to be the best way to view inscriptions

• Figure out how to get statistics about non bot traffic.
• Display inscription numbers in /inscription path, redirect inscription IDs to inscription numbers, and use inscription numbers in all links
• Search with real-time results.
• Search and filter inscriptions by content type, parent, sat attribute, time. (allow same queries in search box)
• Display collections as table, with parent inscription, number of children, total file size, average file size (or median file size), cost to inscribe, range, creation time, sattributes shared by all inscriptions, sattributes on any inscription, and whether or not the collection parent has been burned.
• Graphs of inscription and transfer activity, both mined and submitted to the mempool.
• Blocks horizontally on homepage like mempool.space, with speculative upcoming blocks.
• Click to view block without navigating to a new page.
• Make /inscription and /tx return information about inscriptions in the mempool.
• Audio notification when an inscription is mined.
• Look up inscriptions by address.
• Landing page with prominent text links to major pages and plain-text, non technical introduction to the protocol and the website.
• Route map.
• /collections should show inscription parents in order of which got a new child most recently.
• 8 featured, attractive inscriptions on the home page. The new inscriptions feed is cool, but the quality is so uneven that putting it on the front page is a mistake.
• Black background, white text, white glow.
• New font.
• Click to copy on inscription numbers, outputs, IDs, etc. Shift-click to copy for things which are links.
• Link TXID, output, block hash, and address to mempool.space.
• Display estimated fees on homepage.
• Elide middle of long text fields, like addresses and inscription IDs.
• Restyle <dl>s to be more appealing.
• Infinite scrolling.
• Larger icons.

[DnArt5214]

I believe your website could benefit from a redesign.

[casey]

Probably!

One thing that would easy to do is make the number of inscriptions per row increase the larger the page is.

[DnArt5214]

I think I can make it more vibrant.

[DnArt5214]

By redesigning the landing page for it.

[oxSaturn]

Just curious, would you consider enabling the json api of ord server running on https://ordinals.com/ so anyone can build a public explorer on it (not selling anything as well)? Would like to build one myself, but not sure I want to host the ord server myself somewhere as it's costly to run a bitcoin full node on vps.

[casey]

I'm not sure we want to do that, because it's very likely that a bunch of services would start to rely on the ordinals.com JSON API, which would both be expensive for us in terms of resources, and would be quite centralizing. I think it's good that different services are forced to run their own indexer to get API access, even though I definitely sympathize that it's a pain.

One thing we could do is offer some suggestions for cost-effective hosting. Running ord and bitcoin on a VPS is extremely expensive, but renting a dedicated server is quite cost effective. If I recall correctly, before things blew up, we were running ord and bitcoind on a hetzner dedicated server that only cost $50 a month.

[oxSaturn]

I'm not sure we want to do that, because it's very likely that a bunch of services would start to rely on the ordinals.com JSON API, which would both be expensive for us in terms of resources, and would be quite centralizing. I think it's good that different services are forced to run their own indexer to get API access, even though I definitely sympathize that it's a pain.

Yeah, I can understand your concern.

One thing we could do is offer some suggestions for cost-effective hosting. Running ord and bitcoin on a VPS is extremely expensive, but renting a dedicated server is quite cost effective. If I recall correctly, before things blew up, we were running ord and bitcoind on a hetzner dedicated server that only cost $50 a month.

Thanks for sharing, probably I could develop the site with my local bitcoin node and share the code publicly on GitHub just in case anyone's interested in hosting it.

[plr0001]

The first page of the site needs to be simplified so that it loads faster. It goes something like this:

[casey]

We could definitely add a landing page, which would load faster, although I wonder if faster is better, since in this case the landing page wouldn't do anything.

[plr0001]

Yes, but perhaps it would be worthwhile for visitors to the site (especially newcomers) to show something else on the front page. For example, collections or introductory articles (to familiarize with Ordinals).

[elocremarc]

So we gonna use HTMX for ordinals.com v2?
Just some things could be powered by HTMX and the rust backend. I haven't used HTMX yet but I don't really know of any other React/NextJs like frameworks for making dynamic UI based on rust. /inscription def needs a lot of imporvment could be a good place to get a feel for HTMX.

Search with real-time results.

https://htmx.org/examples/active-search/

Search and filter inscriptions by content type, parent, sat attribute, time. (allow same queries in search box)

https://htmx.org/examples/value-select/

Click to view block without navigating to a new page.

https://htmx.org/docs/#swapping
or
https://htmx.org/examples/modal-custom/

Infinite scrolling.

https://htmx.org/examples/infinite-scroll/

Also things to consider adding.

• Source Preview toggle with highlight JS on iframe for HTML/SVG inscriptions like ord.io and genniedata.com
• Landing page Tab by mime-type filters for satributes/date/block etc
• Family tree explorer.
• Search by delegate