Our old homepage did not clearly explain what MyChilliGarden is for. Photo tiles and repeated post cards came before a clear introduction to the community. So we rebuilt it around a simple idea: a community of home chilli growers.
This is the second post in Behind the Garden, following We Made Our Chilli Site Readable for AI. Here we share how MyChilliGarden is built, in public.
Before
After
What was wrong
The old homepage looked busy and said almost nothing.
- The real H1 was hidden for screen readers only, so a new visitor never saw a clear headline.
- Photo tiles and “latest” blocks repeated the same posts, so the first screen felt full without helping anyone choose a next step.
- Garden Diary, Share your story, and the free Chilli Directory lived in the menu, but not in the page body where people actually look.
- There was no clear introduction explaining who the site is for.
We wrote that audit down on 30 October 2026 and began updating the homepage that day. The changes described here include later refinements.
What we changed
The new homepage opens with a visible line: A community of home chilli growers. Under it, a short paragraph and two clear buttons: Follow the 2026 season, and Share your chilli garden story.
Then the page does the job the old one skipped:
- Latest from the garden – a small set of fresh posts, not the same cards three times.
- Garden Diary band – the full season story, seed to harvest, with a direct link into the Garden Diary 2025.
- Share your chilli story – three short steps to a My Garden page, so growers can see how to join.
- Free Chilli Directory – seed sellers, nurseries, hot sauces and recipe sites, each with where the brand is based.
- Cook with your harvest and Relax in our garden – recipes and our quiet YouTube nature videos.
- About and questions – plain text about who the site is for, that reading and listing are free, and how to take part.
We also pushed a three-column footer sitewide, so Directory, Diary, Stories and Behind the Garden stay one click away from every page, not only the home.
Why this shape
MyChilliGarden is not a product landing page. It is a small site run by home chilli growers. The homepage should make that obvious in under ten seconds: read a guide, follow a season, share a garden, or find a chilli shop in the directory.
That also helps AI assistants. A page with a clear H1, real about text, and links to Diary, Directory and Share is easier to summarise honestly than a wall of duplicate cards.
What comes next
Plans and ideas still on the build-in-public list:
- Listing views before and after (Chilli Directory cards and single listings), so shops and growers look as clear as the home.
- Individual Markdown versions of key guides, alongside the existing consolidated llms-full.txt file.
- A planned MCP interface for the Chilli Directory, keeping “last verified by us” separate from “change suggested by a grower” dates.
- A later idea: an AI-ready Directory where other chilli sites could add their own llms.txt or MCP link.
We will share each step here in Behind the Garden.
Join us
If you grow chillies at home, share your chilli garden story. If you run a chilli shop or sauce brand, add a free Directory listing. How spicy can you go?