Five Years Running a News Site on JAMStack

Carlana Johnson

Director of Technology

Spotlight PA

Spotlight PA

We are hiring!

spotlightpa.org/about/jobs

Session Plan

Doc: https://bit.ly/jamtalk24

Session Plan

  • Architectural History of Spotlight PA
  • Breakout A.
  • Lessons from Practices and Patterns
  • Breakout B.
  • Case Study
  • Breakout C.
  • Q&A

Doc: https://bit.ly/jamtalk24

What is Spotlight PA?

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom dedicated to high-quality investigative and public-service journalism about the Pennsylvania state government and urgent statewide issues.

jamtalk.netlify.app

Port Deposit Bridge

Everyone hates their CMS.

Everyone hates their CMS. *

* But if you work together, they can hate it less.

Breakout A

  • Make groups; introduce yourselves
  • What are the projects you worked on the longest?
  • What went well?
  • What decisions did you live to regret?
  • Pick a group spokesperson

Lessons learned from practices and patterns

Open source everything

Open source everything *

* Almost

Do it manually until it hurts

Think incrementally

Do your tech chores

A lot of tech solves problems small teams don’t have

Breakout B

  • What development practices have you experienced that you liked?
  • What development practices do you never ever want to do again?
  • What lessons from those experiences do you want to share with the group?

Case study

sources.spotlightpa.org

sources.ctmirror.org

amplifycolorado.colabnews.co

Breakout C

  • What projects do you wish you could do?
  • How can you build incrementally toward your goal?

Q & A

Spotlight PA

We are hiring!

Thank you for attending!