Central Wisconsin IT Conference

Previously, the CWITC site was built with Wix. We wanted to move to a platform that allowed us to share session information between our website and mobile app. We also wanted a way for the community to contribute to the site as an open source project.

A static-site generator was an obvious choice, as most of site would be the same for every user. However, we have the ability for a user to log in to submit sessions, so there is need for a light client-side app. We went with Gatsby because it delivers all the great advantages of a static-site while shipping React to the browser.

In order to share content with our mobile app, we needed a Content Management System that was separate from generating the website. It was an easy decision to go with Contentful because of their great community support, especially for Gatsby. When the site is generated, Gatsby pulls the content out of Contentful and builds a graphql datastore. Each page can then query the exact information required to construct itself.

This project had a lot of firsts for me. It was my first time working on a React site, my first production site launched with Netlify, and my first time using a headless CMS. This paradigm is so great to work with, and I’m excited to continue to support and enhance this site!