NEXT.js Rebuild

[Ben-Bromley]

Rebuild in NEXT.js with a more modern feel, more prevalent logo placement, and social links

[Ben-Bromley]

Just some tinkering of mine. Feel free to close if this isn't of interest.

[FreneticScribbler]

Hate to be that guy, especially on something I didn't build, but this feels like using a nuclear warhead to crack a nut...why do we need a JavaScript framework to produce a single page of html?

Design itself does look nicer, just don't see why it can't be just HTML. How does the network weight, load time and accessibility compare to the old site?

By all means ignore me as 'that guy' (I generally did!) but the continued spread of JS frameworks as the web default makes me very sad.

[Ben-Bromley]

You are completely right, it's overkill. Mostly just having some fun and accidentally opened a PR into the main repo instead of my fork.

NEXT.js should have Static Site Generation, so it's still pure HTML being served, but we get the fun framework side of things to work on. Still need to look at performance and accessibility on this.

I think the main idea that interested me was then using a json file to dictate content like the below. Similar to how some frameworks use yaml or markdown etc. Abstracting some of the logic so that if we ever have a IT manager who is not particularly interested in coding, they could still get involved with updating things like this.

{
  "socials": [
    "instagram": {
       "iconSrc": "/instagram.svg",
       "url": "https://instagram.com/nottinghamtec/"
    },
    "etc": {},
  ],
  "links": [
    "main": {
       "url": "https://nottinghamtec.co.uk/",
       "text": "Main Website",
     },
     "etc": {},
  ]
}

[FreneticScribbler]

Ah, I retract some of my grumbling then, I misunderstood what NEXT.js was. I do like static site generators, specifially because what they produce is regular html as you say. Personally I'm a Hugo guy, though. They arent kidding when they sell it as fast!

Data files definitely do seem to make updates more accessible, we use that for the main site and for join with success.

Then again, if people are happy editing JSON or YAML, what's making them afraid of editing the HTML? 🤔