What I am actually trying to build.

“I want a hobby.” → “What are my options?” → “Which one suits me?” → “How do I start?” → “How do I get good?”

Five questions in that order. Nothing answers all five. You get listicles for the first two and a forum argument for the third. Every part below answers one link in that chain. They all read from the same records so they cannot contradict each other.

The reference layer. It answers “what is this?” and nothing else. Every hobby gets the same fields so two entries can be compared:

• What the hobby is and its history
• Major categories and branches within it
• Skills involved, and equipment needed
• Cost, time commitment and accessibility
• Important terminology, defined
• Safety considerations
• Related hobbies and further resources

The instructional layer. It answers “how do I do this?” in order, from nothing to your first real attempt, without a shopping list up front.

Keeping them apart matters. Reference material that keeps stopping to teach you is bad reference, and instructions interrupted by history are bad instructions.

The system everything else hangs off. Broad interests at the top and specific ones below.

level 1 · category
Technology
└── level 2 · a hobby you can take up
    Computer building
    └── level 3 and down · specialisations
        Custom PC building
        └── Custom water cooling
            └── Hardline tubing
                └── Water flow optimisation

The number of levels is not fixed. A new one appears where it marks a real difference in skills or kit or knowledge. Otherwise the tree grows a leaf for every Tuesday and stops being useful.

Two ways in. By name if you know what you are after. By characteristics if you do not. The second one is what turns a database into a discovery engine:

• Cost
• Indoor or outdoor
• Alone or social
• Creative or technical
• Physical or not
• Equipment needed
• Time commitment
• Skill level
• Accessibility
• Learning curve

Category and cost filtering are live now. The rest arrive as the database grows enough to make them mean something.

For people who do not know what to search for. It reads the same records as the tree so a result is always a real entry with a guide behind it. Questions like:

• Do you want to make things?
• Alone, or with other people?
• How much time have you actually got?
• How much equipment are you willing to acquire?
• Technical or creative? Indoors or out? How physical?

It returns several strong matches rather than claiming there is one perfect hobby for you, because there is not. Each result links straight into the tree and its guide.

The community layer and deliberately not the authority layer. For asking questions and sharing projects and arguing about technique.

Forum discussion does not become official content by accident. Reference material is kept separate on purpose. Before they open they need moderation and reporting and anti-scam measures and harassment rules that get enforced.

One email, one hobby, one format:

• What is it? A short explanation
• Why try it? A shorter one
• Skills you will build
• Getting started: straight into the official guide
• Explore further: related hobbies and niches

It gives people a reason to come back when they are not actively looking for anything.

Split into essential and optional for every hobby, because the fastest way to put someone off is a list of eight purchases before their first attempt.

Things get recommended on whether they are any good for a beginner. Commission never decides what is on a list. Where a link earns me something the page says so.

A shop comes later or not at all. It brings inventory and shipping and returns and tax and up front capital. That is a different job from writing about hobbies.

Affiliate links test whether anybody actually buys the things I recommend before I take any of that on.

Affiliate revenue first. Then advertising, once there is enough traffic to justify it. Then a shop, only if there is real demand behind it.

In that order, rather than all three at once. Each one has to earn the next.

• Search. Pages that answer what people type into Google. Cheap hobbies. Hobbies you can do at home. How to start photography. The tree gives those pages a structure instead of a pile of listicles.
• Discovery. The quiz, for people who do not know what they are looking for.
• Content. Guides and the weekly hobby, steadily.
• Community. Forums, eventually, which bring people back on their own.

Different standards for different material. Not everything needs a professional byline:

• General information comes from books and hobby organisations and people who have done it for years.
• Technical or specialised information gets stronger verification and, where practical, review by people who know the subject.
• Guides are based on research and practical knowledge, at the level the subject actually needs.

Fact stays separated from opinion. Disputed claims are not written up as settled.

• Done: the ten rules, the nine categories, the cost bands, and the pages that read them. Search, the A to Z, the cost view and the tree all work. Submissions are open.
• Next: the first entries, each with a wiki page and a guide behind it.
• Then: characteristic search and the quiz, reading the same records.
• After that: forums, the weekly email, kit recommendations.
• Only if it earns it: the shop.

Five hundred hobbies are listed with their specialisations. Not one has a write-up behind it yet, which is the honest position and the next job.