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ABOUT.md

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Website Management

This document provides an overview of how the Python Pirates website is built, deployed, and updated.

Information on how to develop the website using Hugo can be found in the README.md.

Key Points

  • The content is static HTML built at deployment using a website generator
  • Website source is managed on Github available for updates via Pull Request
  • The generated website is hosted on Netlify
  • The Github repo uses Netlify tooling to facilitate automatic builds and deployments
  • Netlify automatically manages the TLS certificates using Let's encrypt (yay https)
  • The DNS is manually managed with Namecheap.com

Generated Static Content

The content for the site is produced using Hugo, a static site generator. This results in what it sounds like: static files comprised of HTML, CSS, and javascript content.

Static content makes the site cheap to host (free) and also reduces the surface area of possible security attacks associated with a full fledged web application.

We use a site generator tool to reduce maintenance and overhead in managing static content files. For example, a common UI component such as the header can be changed in one template file and applied to the entire site rather than hand editing dozens or more affected HTML files.

Authored content is written in Markdown, a simplified mark up language. Markdown tends to be easier to write and maintain than HTML due to less syntax clutter.

Automatic Deployments

Changes to the main Github repo trigger automatic updates to Netlify:

  • Pull Requests trigger the generation of a preview deployment under a unique netlify URL.
    This URL is presented as deploy-preview in the pull request details. Visual inspection of a the preview is recommended before merging a pull request.
  • Any change to the main branch (e.g. merging a pull request) triggers live site deployment.
    The site generation usually completes a few seconds after the git merge.
    Live site deployment is handled automatically by Netlify.

Note: this triggered deployment process only applies to the organization Github repository and not any forks in other Github accounts.

Netlify manages and automatically renews website TLS certificates using the free service Let's Encrypt. The one requirement is we control rights to the domain, which currently expire in December 2020.