BDKinc Website Prototype

Backstory

At the end of 2022, we began the process of updating the BDKinc website. The marketing manager was to provide the content and the Design Specialist was to create the designs. It was my responsibility to guide the team and build the website. Even though I had other responsibilities, building the web presence was important to me. I started as a Web Developer/Designer and building the website is a passion project of mine.

Technical Decisions

The existing website uses Nuxt with a Directus CMS and is run in a Docker environment with a Traefik proxy server. When I created this setup I was the only person managing the server, and building the website. As the company grew, I knew we had to make some changes. One of the changes was switching from Nuxt to Next, the main reason for this change was that I had started training employees to use React, as that is more prevalent in the industry than Vue. Other reasons are SSR, the new App Directory, React Server Components and the ease of deploying to the edge. The website preview is running on Vercel, and was an easy choice since they created Next.js. I have used Cloudflare in the past, and I really like it, but I also wanted to try something new.

Moving the frontend to the edge addressed performance and the ability to deploy from GitHub. It also moved the responsibility of the proxy and web server to the edge provider. We still had directus as the CMS, which had pushed a new version. I wanted to upgrade it but wanted to give the marketing person a say in the backend. I suggested a few different CMS. They ended up wanting Wordpress because their comfort levels. Using headless WordPress, we would be able to use Next.js on the edge and the content creators could use a platform they were familiar.

Long Term

One of the advantages of separating the frontend from the CMS would be easier integrations with other products. As an example, the "Meet the Team" page could pull the employee information from our Microsoft 365 environment. Allowing users to only have to be updated in 1 place. Another strategy was to funnel all contact form and request quote information directly to our CRM. To give the sales people an easier way to sell packages.