This article records future development and enhancement ideas that have been identified during the 15th Battalion website handover. These are not commitments or current operating requirements. Detailed design notes should remain in the related technical Knowledge Base articles rather than being duplicated here.
Timeline improvements
The existing Timeline is the main area identified for future development. See Maintaining the Timeline for the current design and technical dependencies.
- Timeline Manager: replace routine marker entry through the WP Go Maps editor with a purpose-built editor for date, location, title, description, images and an optional related link, with validation and preview.
- Direct chronological navigation: make Previous and Next move directly between dates that contain Timeline points instead of stepping through empty calendar days.
- Cumulative “footsteps” display: keep earlier locations visible as the visitor moves forward, optionally connect them with a route line, and provide controls to focus on the current point or show the whole journey.
- Broader historical presentation: consider developing the Timeline into a richer history interface in which major movements and actions can connect visitors to related people, artefacts, photographs, letters, maps and other records while preserving the visitor’s place in the chronology.
Letters and Museum integration
The Soldier records on the 15th Battalion site exist mainly to group and identify Letters. The definitive Soldier records are maintained on the 48th Highlanders Museum site.
The purpose of a future integration would be very practical: when someone creates or edits a Soldier record on the 15th Battalion site, the system should make it easy to find the matching Soldier on the Museum site and save that record’s URL in the existing Museum link to Soldier field. The editor should not have to leave the record, search the Museum manually, copy the URL and return to paste it.
A useful implementation would allow the editor to search the Museum by name and, where available, service number, review likely matches, open the Museum record if necessary to confirm it, and then select the correct result. The 15th Battalion site would store only the Museum record URL; the Museum would remain the authoritative source for the Soldier’s full record.
See Letters and Diaries – Overview and Soldier records for Letters for the current workflow.
AI-assisted transcription
AI can be used to create a first draft of handwritten Letter transcriptions. It should remain an editorial aid rather than an automatic publishing process. Names, dates, military terminology and unclear handwriting must be checked against the original scans before publication.
Permanent QR-code infrastructure
Any future redesign affecting Project Memorial pages must preserve the URLs embedded in physical QR codes, or provide tested permanent redirects. See Maintaining Project Memorial QR-code Pages.
Using this list
When one of these ideas becomes an active project, update the relevant technical Knowledge Base article with the design, dependencies and implementation decisions. Remove the item from this index once it has been completed or formally abandoned.