Welcome to our new site!
Posted on November 1, 2024 (Last modified on December 18, 2024) • 2 min read • 343 wordsNew technology, new look!
I hope you enjoy the new look as much as I do.
As technology advances, it is important to keep step, particularly in an organization devoted to making social change, as technology (in the form of things like social media, and the Internet in general) is the main driver in causing that change.
By being an avenue and a voice for minorities, we unfortunately have a larger exposure to unsavoury elements on the internet. Denials of Service, 0-day and new browser exploits being released, and the constant threat of spearphishing, require a different approach to a web presence. In my case, I went with a Static Site Generator
After some research and testing, I narrowed my selections to the lightweight champ, Zola , and the relative heavyweight Hugo . After an initial deployment with Zola (with which I was already familiar) to meet our Pride Festival deadline in 2024, I moved to Hugo to generate our site, to make it easier to use, faster, and consistent on more platforms. It allows us to be more secure against server-oriented attacks, while reducing our total infrastructure TCO.
Additionally, after getting used to Hugo, which is Go based, uses Go Templates (and is juuuuust a little brittle ), versus Zola, which uses Rust, is smoking fast, and uses Tera templates (effectively Jinja2), I find I prefer the extra power and flexibility I get out of the Hugo themes and documentation, despite the odd templating “dialect” and opinionated themeing setup.
For hosting, I have gone with an international data and storage company that has robust CDN and failover infrastructure, and can deploy changes to our site rapidly and globally, on an infrastructure already resilient to things like DDoS and *storm-style attacks. (What I would still call “getting smurfed ”).
I hope everyone enjoys the site. Please contact us if you see issues, errors, or omissions. Please also reach out if you would like help setting up your online presence in a similar manner for your non-profit.
Thanks for reading.
Ryan (he/him)