Grace and Aroha

Grace and Aroha: Educational Website Evolution

A thoughtfully designed website for my daughter's daycare teacher that transformed from a simple static site into a sophisticated content management platform, enabling seamless blog publishing while maintaining excellent SEO performance.

Grace and Aroha website showcasing educational content and blog posts

Project Evolution Story

The Initial Need

Created for a passionate early childhood educator who wanted to:

  • Share educational resources with parents and the community
  • Showcase her teaching philosophy and approach
  • Provide a professional online presence for her growing reputation

Phase 1: Hand-Crafted Foundation (2020)

Tech Stack: Pure HTML5, CSS3, Vanilla JavaScript

Initially built as a beautifully crafted static website focusing on:

  • Clean, accessible design prioritising content readability
  • Mobile-first responsive layout for parent accessibility
  • Fast loading times with optimised images and minimal dependencies
  • SEO-friendly semantic HTML structure

Phase 2: Dynamic Content Management (2021)

Evolved Tech Stack: Next.js, Strapi CMS, Heroku → Railway

When the need for regular blog content emerged, I transformed the static site into a modern JAMstack application:

Technical Architecture

Strapi CMS Integration

Implemented a headless CMS solution providing:

  • Intuitive Content Editor: Rich text editing with media management
  • Custom Content Types: Blog posts, resources, testimonials
  • Role-Based Access: Secure content management for the educator
  • API-First Architecture: RESTful and GraphQL endpoints

Automated Publishing Pipeline

Created a seamless content publishing workflow:

  1. Content Creation: Educator writes posts in Strapi's user-friendly interface
  2. Webhook Trigger: Strapi sends webhook on content publish/update
  3. Site Rebuild: Next.js rebuilds affected pages with new content
  4. CDN Invalidation: Automatic cache clearing for instant updates

Links

This project demonstrates the evolution from simple static websites to sophisticated content management platforms, showing how technical solutions can empower non-technical users to share their expertise with the world.