Technology

The website is built with a JavaScript/Node.js and Express back end. These were felt to be relatively easy to learn and using JavaScript everywhere reduces the number of programming languages that need to be learnt (if coming in with no experience).

The front end uses Pug (formerly Jade) as a templating language (it compiles to HTML and is essentially HTML but with stripped down syntax and some cool additional features). Plain JavaScript is used to support interactions and occasionally the JQuery library is used to simplify Document Object Model interactions.

No fancy frameworks such as Angular or React are used to keep it simple. This is a traditional website in the sense that each page is loaded (a visible refresh occurs) opposed to a Single Page Application (SPA) where there is no visible refresh between pages. A SPA would have been overkill for this simple website and also adds more complexity.

Anything that isn't a photograph should be a Scalar Vector Graphic (SVG) for lovely scaling on all devices.

If you are completely lost at this stage, don't panic! Other pages in this wiki will explain how all these things are used in various parts of the website.