Journey to Version 4.0

The path forward, milestone by milestone.

Completed

Phase 1

Planning and intent established, with ideas being refined.

01
Completed

Phase 2

Designing the front end and building the back end.

02
Completed

Phase 3

Migrating legacy data, adding core features, and solidifying the foundation.

03
2026
Completed

Phase 4

Run a live beta, gather feedback, and triage bugs.

04
Completed

Phase 5

Implement improvements based on feedback and bug reports.

05
Completed

Phase 6

Launch Version 4.0, Online Cursor Editor, Old Design, and Animated Cursor Support.

06
In Progress

Phase 7

Introduce user accounts and user submissions.

07
Next

Phase 8 and Beyond

Explore a marketplace, Linux and macOS cursor support, and deeper AI integration.

08

Last updated Mar 06, 2026 at 11:56pm

This is the roadmap I’m currently working on. I’m basically just checking things off as I complete them. You can read individual blog posts for deeper details—this is mainly a running record for me. It may also be useful for anyone else trying to redesign a 20-year-old website like I am. I’ll keep adding to-do items as I discover new ideas and bugs, so this list stays updated.

The order I did this is not top-down.

 

  •  Design the layout and structure
    •  Going with a dual theme: Light and Dark
    •  Create the menu
      •  Going with a side menu that opens and closes based on screen size
      •  I need to look into the SVG icons. Something doesn’t feel right.
      •  I should change the menu to expand on hover instead of clicking.
    • The logo and punchline are corny.
    •  Mobile integration and browser support
      •  Extremely hard. Needs extensive breakpoint testing. 97% of my users are on desktop, but Google dings me hard for not being mobile-friendly.
      •  The grid system is complex.
      •  Only testing on modern browsers. No more IE6 support like version 2.0. Need to collect more data on users’ tech.
    •  Ad integration so I don’t go broke
    •  SEO optimization
      •  Meta descriptions
      •  Canonical links
      •  Schema
    •  Code optimization
      •  AI help improved the speed a lot

 

  •  Create the pages
    •  The blog
      •  Design it
      •  Add a commenting system like the old Cursors-4U.com
    •  The category pages
      •  Grid system
        •  3x2 grid for cursors. I want the focus to be on sets in this version. How do I get it to align properly?
          •  Changed to 3x1
        •  How do I get it to work with inline ads?
      •  Filters users can pick
        •  Most viewed
        •  Most rated
        •  Most commented
        •  Most downloaded (waiting a few months to a year so counts can accumulate)
        •  Most popular
          •  Need to figure out how to combine this with the other filters to create a unified weighted system
            •  Trending pages created with a simple weighted system
    •  The cursor page
      •  Design it
        •  Needs a slightly different layout for cursor sets
        •  Downloading / hotlinking cursors
          •  A lot of questions here. How do I make this work with Craft Assets? I don’t want to manually upload files via FTP. Need to explore Craft Assets further.
            •  Going full CDN
          •  Download cursor and/or PNG? Hotlink cursor or PNG?
            •  Going all in on webp.  Cursors only for downloads.
          •  What about cursor files that include multiple sizes?
            •  Do I allow users to place this file on their website?
            •  32x32 cursors with 256x256 sizes inside could get big fast.
            •  Need to research Windows DPI scaling and SVG files
              •  Yes on everything
          •  How do I reduce content scraping?
            •  Impossible. The entire old website has already been scraped.
              •  Idea is 100 cursor download a 24 max per user.  
      •  Add commenting system
        •  Need to add pagination
          •  For now, just full page loads on click.
        •  Do I transfer over all the old comments?
          •  Yes, transfers and delete bad ones
        •  Spam protection needs to be added
          •  Limit comments to prevent flooding
        •  Do I add a “Recently Commented” section in the sidebar?
      •  Add related cursors
        •  Should I add related by author as well?
          •  Author tab added next to Related Cursors.
      •  Meta information
        •  Attribution
        •  Author
          •  Need to create a takedown page for cursors of unknown origin if the original creator requests it. A lot of cursors are from 20 years ago with unknown attribution. Licensing/copyright issues are something I now have to dig into deeper.
        •  What else do modern websites include?
          •  Need further research.
        •  Need to create schema for SERPs
    •  Search
      •  Sprig Ajax
      •  Typesense
    •  Favorites
      •  Limit to 1k
      •  Is it possible to let users download all their favorites at once?
        •  If this becomes a feature, I should limit it to under 100.
          •  Not possible at the moment because of Legacy cursors.  Need further research
      •  Maybe create a user preferences section
        •  Allow users to choose default filters on category pages so they don’t have to change them every time.
        •  Allow users to set how many cursors they want to see per page.
    •  Cookie banner
    •  Footer
      •  Added random cursors that float above the footer (similar to version 3.0)
    •  Basic pages
      •  About
      •  Contact
      •  Terms of Service
      •  Privacy Policy
      •  DMCA / Takedown
    •  Creator pages
      •  Top 15 creator pages
      •  Directory (searchable)
      •  Individual pages
    •  Tags
      •  Create the page (four tag groups: Style, Mood, Color, Theme)
      •  Start under 200 tags and don’t go over
      •  AI-generated tags with meta descriptions for SEO (too many to do manually)

 

  • Import the old data
    •  How in the world do I get the old data into Craft?
    •  I want the old URL structure for cursor pages
    •  I don’t want the old structure for the blog, but I do want the blog posts.

 

  •  Get the server
    •  AMD Ryzen 9950X, 128GB DDR5 RAM, 2×2TB NVMe (Main)
    •  Dual Xeon E5620, 32GB DDR3 ECC, 240GB (CDN)
      •  How do I make uploads easier?
        •  New ingestion system
      •  What do I do with the old files?
        •  Fix missing cursors
        •  Replace non-alpha transparent cursor images
      •  Use Cloudflare Edge
    • Try to optimize the server
    • Try to secure the server
    •  Look into modern cloud offerings
      •  Not needed at the moment
    •  Need a thorough backup system: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly

 

Future Plans

These are all the future plans I want to tackle, but I don’t have the expertise or experience yet. I’ll need to do a lot of research.

  • User system
  •  Upload system (Private testing)
    •  Upload forms
    •  Automation at nearly every step
    •  Security considerations
      •  Only .cur and .ani files
      •  ZIPs for set downloads
        •  System generates the .inf
        •  System generates the readme
        •  System generates the ZIP
  •  Auto image conversion system into cursors
    •  WebP, PNG, GIF, and animated images get turned into cursors automatically
    •  Need to figure out how to determine the cursor hotspot
  • Marketplace system so people can sell their cursors. I plan to make this 100% user revenue—I bring the traffic and servers.
  • I want to get Linux-based cursors into the system. This adds a whole level of complexity that I don’t fully understand yet.
  • Some kind of user-generated cursor system. AI maybe? I don’t know how to build this yet. It’ll take major funding and research.
    •  Already started experimenting with AI cursors.  Very hard to get good ones.  Needs further research.
  • Allow users to select any two cursors and generate custom CSS so they can use one for pointer and one for hover.
    •  Create a custom Favorites page where selecting any two cursors outputs the CSS code users can copy/paste
    •  Is this possible site-wide?
      •  Appears to be possible.  Very messy with new buttons.  Needs further testing
    •  Why not allow users to build full custom sets and download them? Maybe drag cursors into a menu to sort/order. This could actually work.
      •  Don't think this is happening.  I can't get the AI to give cursors the role that they should have.  Needs further research.
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