National Research Group
As lead developer of the National Research Group website, I architected the site as a statically generated site (SSG) using a Gatsby + Contentful + GraphQL stack, built the initial implementation, and led the team through the remainder of the build. Some highlights:
- Static Site Generation (SSG) with Gatsby. Designed the site as a fully static site generated at build time using Gatsby. Gatsby’s built-in GraphQL data layer serves as the bridge between Contentful’s headless CMS and the rendered pages, pre-rendering every page at build time for fast load times and simple hosting.
- Netlify Deployment. Set up the original Netlify deployment, a natural pairing with SSG since the entire site is just static assets deployed to a CDN.
- Overcoming GraphQL & Contentful Challenges. Solved complex GraphQL challenges that were blocking the team, enabling the build to move forward. For example, GraphQL queries would break when the last instance of a content type was removed from Contentful, so we built a more dynamic approach to handle that gracefully. Separately, Contentful imposes limits on the number of content types per tier, so I consolidated related content types (e.g., combining various link types into a single link type) to avoid pushing the client into a more expensive plan. This was a bit awkward architecturally but saved the client significant cost.
- Search. Built a search feature that queries across all site content, returning results with content type tags and category labels.
- Variety of Page Types. The site features several distinct page types including industry-specific pages (Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Gaming, Lifestyle), an article/thought-leadership section with featured article carousels and category filtering, a news listing, job openings, a contact page, and more.
- Forms. The site includes a contact form and a newsletter signup form that appears across multiple pages.
