MCCreations

A Minecraft Community Site created with the Wix Editor making heavy use of their API and managed database services.

Tools

  • Wix.com
  • Velo
  • Javascript

The Idea

It all started in 2020. The owner of the most popular site to download and host Minecraft content was becoming harder and harder to get into contact with and the site was beginning to show it's age with no major improvements since around 2013. I decided to take matters into my own hands, but with little web development experience under my belt I started off using Wix to speed up development.

The Goal

The goal was to make a site where both creators and users in the Minecraft Community felt truly respected. Freedom, Communication and Ease of Use where my primary goals when starting the project.

The Launch

In March of 2020 MCCreations launched looking like... this

The old Homepage courtesy of archive.org

Support

However a key goal of MCCreations was support. As such, it's evolved a lot over the years.

In December the site move to a dark mode design, along with a redesign of the header and nav.
In November 2021 the homepage was completely redesigned from the group up.
Finally in October 2022 MCCreations on Wix received it's last update in favor of the new Next.js site.

MCCreations has changed a lot over the years. From the introduction to many many features from multi-file support to a raw HTML description editor to several goal changes like the introduction and subsequent removal of Bedrock content. The project is a physical representation of my growth as a computer science professional. From just leaving high school all the way to graduating college this project has seen me through it all.

Lessons

When MCCreations first started there was no plan. I quickly threw together a site on Wix as a demo and decided to release it to the public. I never planned on supporting development on a project on Wix in the long term. All throughout MCCreations existence I tried again and again to get the site off of Wix but I just did not have the technical know how until 2023. I've seriously learned the importance of a road map, no matter how loose. I've learned the importance of picking and working with tools you wish to support long term rather than just going with the easiest option. I've learned how to take feedback and suggestions from the community and the people using my site.