It started in 2023, when I was still in high school. My friend Richard Lu had an idea for a website where students could share A-Level, IB, and AP notes. It wasn’t meant to be a startup or business—just a useful resource for our classmates and ourselves.
We explored different hosting options and chose WordPress because it was free, beginner-friendly, and quick to launch. At the time, we cared less about making it our own than sharing useful material.
We jumped straight into building. We spent hours setting up a Linux server on Tencent Cloud before finally installing WordPress. Every small visual improvement felt like huge progress. For the first time, I experienced the excitement of publishing something online and seeing others use it.
At its peak, the site reached around 1,000 daily active users. Students saved our notes, browsed resources, and created accounts. It stopped feeling like a school project and started feeling like a real product. We even dreamed of working on it full-time.
Seeing people rely on something I helped build really changed my perception of what software could be.
But growth came with trade-offs.
To support more features, we added more plugins like a prebuilt forum or a user permission control system. Each plugin solved an immediate need. However, together they introduced too much complexity.
The site became slow, often taking about four seconds to load. Plugin conflicts happened constantly, customizations grew fragile, and we spent more time fixing bugs than publishing content.
For the first time, I noticed how technical decisions directly affected user experience. I read articles about it and realized that because of this our site actually lost many potential users.
That frustration sparked something deeper.
I began asking questions I hadn’t asked before:
WordPress had allowed me to build quickly, but it also hid the fundamentals. After struggling with prebuilt code, I realized that I wanted to understand what I was building instead of treating it as a black box.
That was why I started learning web development from the ground up: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and backend concepts.
After I completed my university applications, I handed the platform over to the next leadership team. Eventually, they decided to shut it down.
But by then, the website had already fulfilled its purpose. It had reached thousands of students. It had solved a real problem. And more importantly, it had changed how I think about building software.
If that project taught me one thing, it is that technical choices are never purely technical.
Performance affects trust. Simplicity affects adoption. Design affects retention.
Since then, I have adopted a user-experience-first mindset. I care not only about whether a system functions, but whether it feels responsive, intuitive, and intentional. I’ve learned that engineering is not just about adding features, but about crafting an experience that users want to engage with.
AdvA-Level was not perfect. It was bloated, improvised, and full of beginner mistakes. But it changed me from someone who used tools into someone who wanted to understand and build systems.
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