Relevant Web Tech

[wem5637]

What kind of frameworks / libraries / packages / tools does everyone think would be best for this project? It would be good to add some more robust capabilities.

[mikehostetler]

Thanks for opening this @wem5637

Given that we're just hosting this with Github pages, our options are somewhat limited. We have no server-side environment, so we have to either use a Static Site generator or only include client-side code.

There's a list of some cool Static Site generators here: https://www.staticgen.com/

I'm happy to do it by hand as well.

Goal is to make it as easy and accessible to people as possible.

[peterpme]

Gatsby is super popular and is driving a lot of the documentation behind FB-backed projects like React, Flowtype, Immutable, etc. https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby

I can attest to how easy it is to use. You've got the ability to write html, markdown, react components, whatever your heart desires. Its fast and deploys straight to GH pages

[peterpme]

There's also the option of forking http://sydjs.com and using something more dynamic that runs on KeystoneJS (a node CMS). I was active in that dev community and know my way around it.

I'd be happy to help out with the piping as long as someone covers the design stuff 😄

[mikehostetler]

The trick with something like Keystone is that we'd need a backend hosting provider. If we could find a free one, that'd be great. Perhaps a free Heroku instance?

Overall, I just want to keep it simple because simple will be best for the project going forward. I'll take a look at Gatsby this morning.

[peterpme]

There's https://zeit.co/now which offers free hosting for open source / community projects. The drawback is having your source folder public, but since we're on Github it doesn't matter much anyway 😄

I'd be happy to help set all this stuff up!

[EvanHahn]

Jekyll is supported natively by GitHub Pages. I know it's not JavaScript so it may not match the project, but it won't require any special build work.

[kyledetella]

All of these ideas will work, but I'm curious as to what the content of this site will be. Maybe deciding on that would help steer the conversation towards a natural solution? It's possible that we could end up right back at this point, but it's worth a shot.

(Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere)

[mikehostetler]

@kyledetella I wrote up a design brief here with a rough idea of the content: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_WGxm2nwBSThEGNZhe-MfkCjIKYnc0VQu910YeVLqFk/edit#heading=h.tvolj7293n6a

For convenience, here's my initial SWAG at a site outline:

• Home Page
• Events - A list of local JavaScript Events
• Jobs - Local Job board
• Resources - Resources for those learning JavaScript in the city
• Community - References for how to get involved in the local JavaScript community. Also list of community organizations (like meetup groups with small description, link, youtube link)
• About - Describe about the website goal and contact us form

Inspiring sites are:

• http://sydjs.com
• http://chicagoruby.org

This is open of course, but I wanted to set the stage for the designer.

Vision beyond the design is to keep it 100% open and public, available for PR's from anyone in the Chicago JS community (and beyond!). Personally, I'd like a simple solution that finds a healthy balance between ease of contribution (markdown for content? can't assume developer contributors) and pride in our solution (Static Site generators are cool, React is cool, lets not slouch here).

[kyledetella]

@mikehostetler thanks! I just joined the Google group so came across that document. This is a big help.

I assume that even the more frequently updated content such as Events and Jobs would be backed by static files and in that case, I am a fan of Jekyll and Gatsby (as @EvanHahn and @peterpme mentioned).

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I have a (tangential) crazy-town idea. It could be neat to define a core data set for this site (even if its just static JSON files for now) and then over time build out versions of the site using different JS technologies (React, Vue, vanilla, etc). This could serve both as an exercise in learning as well as exposure to some things we may not otherwise use.

[peterpme]

Something worth discussing is how the event / job board should work. This can all be static with PRs that add jobs and events. I would almost prefer this b/c it'll keep the recruiters at bay and force this to be a developer-driven community / experience.

@kyledetella great idea for down the road!

[mikehostetler]

Gatsby looks pretty cool. It fits closest to my original idea.

I'm 👎 on Jekyll because it's Ruby. Not that Ruby is bad, but it kind of defeats the purpose when we're trying to build Chicago "JavaScript".

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Your crazy idea sounds pretty awesome! I wonder if we couldn't do this as a Hackathon using something like Graph.cool to back the data. I am guessing if we contacted them, they would host the data for free if we threw them a link or something.

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@peterpme 100% Agree, A little bit of friction on creating job postings is not a bad thing ;-)

[kyledetella]

Your crazy idea sounds pretty awesome! I wonder if we couldn't do this as a Hackathon using something like Graph.cool to back the data. I am guessing if we contacted them, they would host the data for free if we threw them a link or something.

Probably a conversation best saved for down the line, but thats a cool idea!

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It sounds like Gatsby may be the choice here. I'm happy to help in any way. Just let me know.

[mikehostetler]

Cool, I'll followup with a mention on the Mailing List about Gatsby and we can leave this suggestion up for a few more days to gather comments.

No immediate rush since the design is still happening and would love to get as much input as possible.

[peterpme]

FWIW I've been working with graph.cool directly and have contributed back some functions & examples and they offer a free plan for these scenarios.

Gatsby FTW!

[sioked]

👍 to using Gatsby- I've done a bit of work with it in the last few months. It's very simple to set up a few basic templates then create all your content in markdown and generate the static pages. The graphql querying of data works really well and the output is incredibly fast.