hmmm....you want to be "the spiritual successor to DSL Reports?" Hope you can be. Just saying what I'd like to see.
1.) an honest to goodness login page. Not some BS JavaScript and DOM manipulation popup on the page, a whole page dedicated to logging in, with a distinct title attribute so that my password manager can identify it and then fill it in; one which I can bookmark, like broadbandbulletin.com/login or something like that. Hint: the title attribute should be more than just "sign in" or "log in", like 50,000 other Web sites.
2) Zero animations. Do not zoom or slide parts of the page around the browser's window. There's simply no need whatsoever for it, it's eye candy at best and nothing more than a distraction and something one must wait for completion.
To me, that is what DSLR was like; something sensible before "designers" got a hold of the Web.