Jewish Family Service of Orange County, NY (JFS). Their previous website was 12 years old and lacked the ability to be updated easily. They were using a WordPress website, which inundated them with too many options. For the layperson, it was too much to handle, which left them unable to update the website on their own. Counter-intuitive to the idea of a Content Management System (CMS).

I find that most clients are not really worried about being able to update every little detail of their site and would rather know how to update the content as quickly as possible. This is where Statamic comes in. While it's another CMS like WordPress, its "Control Panel" allows users to focus on building content while the developer ensures that the content doesn't break the site. Being built on top of Laravel also allows me to easily create Add-ons.

The front-end of the website was built using Statamic's templating engine called Antlers. Accompanied by Tailwind for the styling and Alpine for minor JavaScript interactions, the front-end was easily built with all its functionality localized to just one component. Most of the actual heavy lifting as a developer was building the add-ons to the website.

Statamic normally leverages a flat-file structure. Meaning you don't have to have a dedicated database for the website. However, considering the type of work that JFS performs and the add-ons required, a database just made more sense. I mainly created an add-on that helped them organize their staff in many ways:

1. Add someone as a staff member. This means they can add contact info, photos, and organize how they appear on the public-facing staff page.

2. Create a Statamic user

3. Add a role to a Statamic User

4. Control permissions based on user roles

The add-ons needed to leverage Inertia/ Vue. While I could create the back-end UI with Blade templates, they would have this really jarring effect of a blank page when navigating to and from them. Instead, I leaned into current best practice and used Inertia/ Vue.

I also leveraged a pre-made calendar system that I modified for their particular needs. Allowing for a clean form that added events to their public-facing calendar.

Statamic also allowed me to create several forms for their various applications. Whether it was a career or volunteering, they received all the important information and received alerts as well.

This was a fun project, and it forced me to really manage my time and exercise my coordination skills.