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Cedric Garcia
Cedric Garcia

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Need advice on first website

Hello!

I am starting my journey as a developer and building a simple website for an NGO.
I am able to code in Ruby on Rails and some basic Javascript (in addition to HTML and CSS) but am thinking to ditch JS to make it lighter.

The only requirement would be that the client should be able to modify the content without my intervention (update events section, add articles or modify some info of the website).

On the optional preferred aspects would be a very light-weight website (I'm interested in delving into sober, more eco-friendly web development, any resources on that would be appreciated too!), as open-source and cheap as possible and obviously as easily maintainable as possible. Scalability isn't required.
Although very unfamiliar with the deployment and hosting aspects (I only learned Heroku during my bootcamp), I have seen Hugo could be a good option for this since there's no need for dynamically generated content (just the introductory page of the NGO, upcoming and past events and latest scientific publications by the NGO (short article, text only) but I'm a bit lost and would like some advice.

Thank you very much!

Top comments (8)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I am able to code in Ruby on Rails and some basic Javascript (in addition to HTML and CSS) but am thinking to ditch JS to make it lighter.

Are you familiar with Turbo and Stimulus? These seem like the very Rails-centric way to accomplish "sprinkles" of JS in an otherwise very interactive site.

As far as hosting goes, render.com would give a lot of Heroku-esqe simplicity at a cheaper price. But if you want something even cheaper while still being much easier than stuff that's closer to the metal, I'd recommend checking out hatchbox.io as another option.

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Cedric Garcia

Thanks! You are correct indeed, my basic JS is Turbo and Stimulus but although it feels tempting to use Rails, I don't think the scale of the project requires a backend and I'd rather learn to adapt to the project than do the opposite!

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Cedric Garcia

Thank you for your feedback! would you know some use-cases or specificities of Jekyll over Hugo or Astro? From the glimpse I got at those 2 static site generators, Hugo seems to work similarly while Astro might have some interface for the client to update the page.
I'll definitely have a look at Netlify Drop in that case!
Thank you for the help as well, I think I'll make a serie on the project for documentation and if it can help future newbies!

Cheers!

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Travis

Hey Cedric, I would recommend a static site generator like Hugo as mentioned or something similar being Astro, Gatsby and next.js. I have a post about some great sites for themes and templates that might help you get inspired. Good luck with your project!

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Cedric Garcia

Thank you very much Travis!