I'm working on a capstone project for college where my team is tasked with building a website for our professor. The site needs to compile information from his personal website, links to his books, Google Scholar page for his papers, and a GitHub page with software created by his students. The challenge is that the site shouldn't be static; it must allow our professor or his students to easily add new sources and links without any coding.
The professor wants a straightforward user interface since he dislikes the current process of downloading HTML files to edit them. I've thought about using platforms like Neocities or GitHub Pages, but I'm unsure if these can support a self-editing system. I've also used WordPress in the past, which has a user-friendly interface, but it might not fit his needs. Worst-case scenario, I could create an offline UI for editing HTML, but that doesn't seem like it would impress him much.
8 Answers
I've actually used Google Sheets as a makeshift database before, which could be an interesting approach!
If you're in a senior capstone course, that does sound a bit like busy work for the professor. But hey, if you need tools, I usually go with Nuxt for these kinds of projects, and they have a studio that might help with your needs.
Nuxt looks promising based on their website!
Why not use a database? There are free versions out there, like Vercel or Supabase, which could really increase your options and capabilities!
If you choose a free host that supports PHP, you could use it to create and edit text, CSV, or JSON files instead of a database. That could keep things dynamic without the complexities of database handling.
Honestly, people often assume these tools exist, but finding the right one can be tricky. GitHub Pages might allow some basic editing via Actions, but it’ll still require manual edits in a text editor. Setting up a GitHub repo and utilizing the Issues or Discussions tab might be a good alternative to get around the editing hassle.
Sounds like a plan! Maybe we can use Markdown files for organizing this.
Thanks for the suggestion!
He might be looking for something that can be built with Astro and a Git-backed CMS like Decap. You can push updates to a repo and automatically deploy it using Cloudflare Pages or GitHub Pages.
Check out Astro; it lets the user edit Markdown files directly on GitHub, which could simplify things a lot.
This makes me think of TiddlyWiki—it’s an interesting tool to explore!
We're all seniors, too, so I get that! It does seem a bit like an errand, but it's what we have to work with. I'll check out Nuxt, though I'm worried he wants 'stable technology' since other classes have used outdated stuff.