05 · Content as data

The engine has no admin dashboard. No editor, no entry wizard, no publish button. An entry is a file, a series is a directory, and the series metadata — name, description, tagline, ordering — sits in a separate file inside that directory.

As a result, adding a new series is an operation on one directory rather than a rebuild of the site. The engine finds series by itself, scanning the content directory against a fixed pattern. There is no list of series anywhere that would need updating — which means there is no list anyone can forget.

A series' behaviour is data too. Whether it renders as a gallery, how the invitation to rate is phrased beneath a text, what a screen reader announces — all of it sits in the series file. Previously it lived in the code as comparisons against particular names, and it was one of those solutions that work perfectly until the day a second site appears.

The drawbacks of this approach are real and there is no point hiding them. A non-technical person will not add an entry unaided. There is no live preview. There is no uploading photographs from a browser. This tool assumes somebody on the other side who can operate a repository — or somebody doing it on their behalf.

We chose that drawback deliberately, because an admin dashboard is a promise to maintain an interface for years, and early deployments are meant to teach us something. A signup form teaches nothing. We return to this in the last entry of the series, because the direction there is clear.