Welcome!
...to the new-Newbury Astro website (WIP). Why?
- The old website is old:
- It was over-engineered (it could do everything but it actually needed to do very little);
- It costs money (there are cheaper options than 5/6 years ago);
- It sits on a server that only one person has total access to;
- That person can't remember what they did 6-days ago, let alone 6-years;
- It looks bad.
Why is this one better?
- The new website is new:
- It is a static website. It doesn't really do anything unless you want it to;
- It's hosted for free (I cannot guarantee forever, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't);
- There is no server--the site is pulled from a public repository and built in the 'cloud' (spooky);
- This means that (theoretically) anyone can copy it, modify it and host it wherever they want;
- It looks less-bad.
Technical Info/To Do
The basics of it are:
- A popular static site builder called Hugo is used to create the site from templates and markdown files;
- The files are stored on GitLab (there are some technical and philosophical reasons for this);
- The site is built and hosted by Cloudflare Pages (a major content delivery network);
- CSS is created with tailwindcss (the 'in' thing and easy to work with);
- An online backend to the repository is provided by netlifycms (it's pretty basic but quite powerful and means you don't need repo access to update the site).
- When you publish something the site automatically gets rebuilt and deployed. If there is a problem it can be rolled back easily. Also, the site is set to rebuild itself once a week to make sure any upcoming events/meetings are correctly shown. This can be adjusted or manually run quite easily.
What needs to be done?
- Get feedback. No point in any going further if things are not acceptable;
- Then, add all the content from the old site; would be nice to spruce it up a bit (hint)?
- Properly style stuff like buttons, sort layouts and see if other fonts/colours/images look better;
- Add a dark mode that can be toggled (can't really have an astronomical website without a dark mode?);
- Move this test site to a public repository and give access to anyone who wants it;
- Get feedback. Archive old site and make new one 'live'.
Test Form loaded from Google Workspace:
The following form exists in the NewburyAstro Google Workspace. Responses can be automagically entered into a Google (spread)Sheet and the relevant persons can be alerted by email (according to the documentation...).
Keep scrolling...
Some test files on the NewburyAstro Google shared drive:
Files and folders from the society Google Drive (GD) can be shared. I think it makes sense to keep documents (Google Docs), PDF's and large images on the GD because:
- It's easier to use than a minimalist website (AKA idiot proof?);
- It removes a lot of clutter from the website storage (not a huge problem but there are some technical concerns);
- Google Workspace is designed for collaboration (drafts, multiple editors, comments, etc.);
- It's gratis (seems a shame not to get something out of Google);
- Google keep everything up to date/backed up (everyone trusts Google, right?).
Sadly the formatting is non-customizable (you can't even sort by date), but keeping things arranged properly on the Drive should keep things tidy. If you end up with a lot of documents (?!) a separate document site with navigation could be set up on the Google Workspace