As you may know, we recently launched this website. For a top level history and rationale of what we were hoping to achieve, please have a read of this article first.
If you're looking for the nuts and bolts behind the messaging, well you've come to the right place.
Website front end development
We wanted the site to reflect a point in time, technology wise, and ensure it has the absolute best chance to achieve excellent search visibility. The front end of the site is put together with modern CSS techniques and APIs; like CSS custom properties and, of course, CSS grid.
We made use of Webpack splitChunks to 'modularise' Javascript and only required the code necessary for the current pages functionality that the user happened to be on. All animation states were create with GSAP. To keep this all running smoothly we've used asset cache busting on every build to ensure the latest code is always served to users.
Backend
As an agency that prides itself on being CMS agnostic, we conducted the same review of available technology that we do with every client project before we started. There were three clear options based on requirements.
- Wordpress, which was discounted on the basis that our CMS editors reviewed the shortlist and found our final choice a more pleasant experience for them.
- Kentico Kontent. We love Kontent (a cloud based headless content as a service system), but the free license tier (which was all we'd need) doesn't allow a 'code first' approach. All paid plans do.
- Craft. Which was ultimately what we went for. Craft has an extremely reasonable pricing structure and is ideal for the more security conscious when considering it against something like Wordpress.
Within Craft, all templates were written in Twig. Modular development means that any block created can be used on any page on the site to create super unique layouts in minutes. We ensured that matrix fields were leveraged to their full capabilities with the SuperTable plugin by Verbb. SEO requirements were covered with SEOmatic.
Hosting
With all the work that's gone into the site itself, we were obviously super keen to ensure that we weren't let down by the power behind serving the experience to our users.
We opted to host the site with Hyperlane. Within the industry Hyperlane are known for being very secure, stable and lighting fast. Multiple environments mean we can manage deployments between UAT, QA and production environments with ease.
Next steps?
As I mentioned previously - we are very pleased with the site. It was a true team effort. We're not resting on our laurels though. We're currently only on phase 1. We can't wait to show you what phase 2 has in store!
So there you go, if you've read this far down and like what you read or maybe you're thinking you would have had some better ideas or improvements - we're currently recruiting, so why not get in touch?
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Wesley Maynard