Zamec

This was an exciting project to do. My client, Sara Zamecznik, a former art student at KHIO in Oslo, is an accomplished artist who creates art in various media, specializing in ceramics. When I learned that she was about to graduate and had been showcasing her art exclusively on Instagram, I realized the need for a more professional platform, a personal website. I reached out to Sara and presented her with an offer she couldn’t refuse. I had the freedom to use whatever technology I preferred, with her only requirement being a design that was minimalistic, mobile-friendly, and cost-effective to host. With these criteria in mind, I set about finding a suitable technology stack. I immediately thought of using a CMS like WordPress or Squarespace for their ease of use and ease of maintenance. While CMS platforms like WordPress or Squarespace are popular for their ease of use, they come with a literal cost (WP is free but needs a server, Squarespace is a hosted solution that costs money). Fortunately, there are more cost-effective alternatives. Given the nature of the site, all of the content could be static and only need updating when she makes a new post. This is where static site generators (SSGs) and headless CMS systems come in. By using SSGs, such as Next.js, to pull content from the headless CMS, in this case Contentful, I was able to generate a static website. This approach is ideal for achieving a custom UI design and allows for easy hosting on Vercel, for free. It also allows non-coders to create content through a user-friendly CMS interface, which triggers automatic website rebuilds via webhooks. This choice comes with a downside; changing the UI in the future would either require coding knowledge or hiring my services again. After discussing the pros and cons, we agreed on the headless CMS approach.