Beta version of the platform has been released last month and we currently add the final touches to this version before its evaluation.
Cache control
Our goal is to have a low-tech platform, and browser cache plays a crucial role in reducing the number of requests and the bandwidth needed. Setting the rights parameters to have resources that expiry when new content is updated is key: that's what we did for the beta version.
In the future versions of the platform, we will propose offline access to some pages. This way, it can still be accessed for visitors with bad internet connections, or if our webhost fails. It will use a service worker and the browser cache to have a seamless offline experience.
Wordpress?
Last month, we've discussed the relevance of a CMS (content management system) where all content is managed on a dropbox. Yes, Wordpress might not be the best choice for content management. But Wordpress can be more than that.
We've set up a contact page that use a POST request to send emails. This kind of request requires a server to handle it and then send a proper email. Wordpress is an amazing toolbox, and can be accessed through its headless API: by using a plugin (Contact Form 7) we can, from our HTML page made with gatsby, send a Wordpress request to send an email. The plugin also handles some basic spam protection with additional features much appreciated.
You can now contact us directly from the website!
User tracking
Privacy is a major concern. Our habits are getting tracked all over the internet, generating datas and using computing power for, mainly, marketing analysis. However, any website could use a bit of user tracking to improve the user experience and make sure its content is available and accessed by visitors.
The question of Why tracking users is the one and only that still keeps us from installing a third-party analytics tool. This website is, for now, not tracking user in any way and it simplifies our work regarding the GDPR obligations, as well as keeping the platform free of third-party scripts that would make the platform heavier.
Our position regarding user tracking might change in the future, as we are obliged to produce statistics regarding the European Project and visits of this website as well as upcoming e-learning modules. For now, we use server logs to measure the number of visits on the platform.
Future steps
We will start implementing some kind of analytics for future outputs that require some data for our project reports, and we will start experimenting with the offline version of the website.