Log the last time a site was started and display in the UI

[ndiego]

What

When you have many Studio sites, it can become confusing what's what. A small quality of life improvement would be to display the last time the site was started.

Here's a minimalistic implementation.

Why

I often have demo sites that are months old, and having the date helps me identify the one I'm looking for.

How

The placement of the "Last started" date could be placed in the Site details section of the Settings tab. However, it does not look like we are currently logging the last time a site was started. This code would need to be added.

[wojtekn]

@ndiego I usually use the site name, including emojis, to categorize my sites. Did you think about trying such an approach?

Displaying "Last started" information may make sense. However, I'm unsure if the Settings tab fits that best.

If Studio displayed such information, wouldn't a tooltip over the site name in the sidebar be a cleaner place to display that?

[wojtekn]

CC @matt-west

[matt-west]

Thanks for the suggestion @ndiego!

I don’t think this belongs in the Settings tab.

We could add a tooltip when you hover over the start button showing when the site was last started.
I question whether displaying this is useful for the majority of users though.

We’ve heard feedback from other users that they want the ability to favourite sites and have them appear at the top of the list in the sidebar. We could extend that to also allow people to sort by the last started timestamp, or site name.

Would having more flexibility over ordering of the sites list solve the underlying problem for you here @ndiego?

[wojtekn]

We could add a tooltip when you hover over the start button showing when the site was last started.

Would you see this as an addition to the "Start site" tooltip, e.g., "Start site (Last started on Mar 2, 2025, 14:08)" or keep the "Start site" tooltip for the button and "Last started on Mar 2, 2025, 14:08" for the site name itself?

[matt-west]

That's a good point. I forgot we had that tooltip on the button already.

In that case, a tooltip isn't the right approach. We already have a lot of tooltips in Studio and it starts to get a bit overwhelming.

[ndiego]

Yeah, not sure where to place this timestamp. Perhaps it would be better suited to the Overview tab. No strong opinion, other than I would be great to log and display somewhere.

We’ve heard feedback from other users that they want the ability to favourite sites and have them appear at the top of the list in the sidebar. We could extend that to also allow people to sort by the last started timestamp, or site name.

Would having more flexibility over ordering of the sites list solve the underlying problem for you here @ndiego?

Absolutely. Improving the sidebar would be an incredible enhancement.

I believe it should work like Slack and other apps.

• Sites can be favorited (starred), which places them in a dedicated group at the top of the list.
• Users can also create custom groups for their sites
• Groups can be expanded or collapsed
• Sites can be moved between groups, but all sites within a group are ordered alphabetically by default
• The user can choose how to order sites in the sidebar alphabetically, by last started, etc.
• Groups can be reordered, but the starred group will always be at the top
• When creating a new site, users have the option to place them in a group. Sites will default to a generic "Sites" group, much like Slack uses "Channels"
• Groups would have a dedicated dropdown that allows users to:
  • Start all sites
  • Stop all sites
  • Delete all sites
  • Add new site to group
  • [anything else we can think of]

[matt-west]

These are great ideas @ndiego. Thanks for sharing.

I think we should hold off on adding a Last started timestamp to the UI. The problem that’s trying to solve would be better addressed by adding the customisation options to the sites list.

We’re typically not great at removing things from products, so if we add the label now, it will probably hang around for a long time.