51–60 of 113 posts
What we did for tacticalvote.co.uk: 1. A static site generator, with markdown as the source input in Github 2. Data from Google Sheets 3. A bash job on a cron that would poll both for changes... if changes exist, re-publish the site or data and purge Cloudflare cache using their API 4. Configure Cloudflare via Page Rule to Cache Everything Even with a very high change rate and hundreds of thousands of visitors a day…
Wouldn't the people putting out emergency website likely be local governments? If so, wouldn't there be hurdles to using cloud providers like Netlify? How do local governments usually host their websites?
https://emergency-site.dev/posts/2020-03-22-example-post/ I would provide much less background information here. "What you need to do" should definitely not be below the fold. You should boil it down to: 1. This is happening 2. This is what you personally need to do about it. Then add whatever else you want after that. I know this is just an example, but it should set a good example.
In other words, if you think about it in terms of the typical inverted pyramid model of journalism (which many here on HN already know about), what you need to do is the most important information, why you need to do it is secondary. That might be debatable to some people but that's how I view it.
https://emergency-site.dev/posts/2020-03-22-example-post/ I would provide much less background information here. "What you need to do" should definitely not be below the fold. You should boil it down to: 1. This is happening 2. This is what you personally need to do about it. Then add whatever else you want after that. I know this is just an example, but it should set a good example.
As a technical writer if push comes to shove I would recommend leading off with what you need to do first and foremost, and then going into detail about why as needed. You should optimize your content for the audience that is already convinced and just wants to know what they need to do in order to stay safe. You can follow up with the information explaining why they need to do this for the secondary audience of peop…
Tell the most important info in the title as briefly as possible.
Repeat the most important info with a little more detail in the first paragraph.
Repeat your main point and add more details in additional paragraphs. You should be able to cut out the final paragraphs (or not bother to read them) without losing any actually critical information.
Each additional paragraph should add new information, but not be essential to the main point of the piece.
Answer: who, what, when, where, how and why.
I mean, call me crazy, if this is for an emergency, wouldn't it make more sense to provide a small archive with the source files in it, no third party at all. requires an unarchiver, and a text editor.
Let's pretend we are not web developers for a second. How do I build this website if I don't know what static page means?
Hire someone who knows how to build a scalable website. This isn't a horribly hard problem, but it's easy to make a mistake.
What’s wrong with just plain HTML and Nginx or Apache?
Netlify CMS is based on React. In what universe could this be considered appropriate for a basic emergency website? Edit: I don't really mind if React is only used as the authoring interface. But the consumer view should not require Javascript, and AFAICT Netlify CMS does.