Introduction¶
Cubane is written in python and is based on the Django web framework. Cubane adds additional concepts that will help you to build websites even faster.
Website Performance¶
An increasingly significant part of a great website experience is performance, which is not necessarily related to server response time alone.
We have to merge and minify resources, lazy-load images and background images. We use art direction to change the shape of images based on device properties. We also commonly use custom web fonts and of course, we are using SVG icon sets.
We are also concerned about prioritising (and perhaps inlining) all content and assets for ‘above the fold’ content. Other resources are loaded asynchronously. As a consequence, we have to split our assets into several ‘buckets’ to merge and minify them individually.
Finally, we cache everything; or we use static site generators so that we have the best possible server response time by avoiding any server-side computation.
Cubane provides the infrastructure for those things so that you don’t have to deal with them on a regular basis.
Content Organisation¶
We face a variety of different challenges when working on website projects: Some websites require a simple page structure; others organise content hierarchically.
Sometimes we work with collections of things, most commonly with posts but also with business-specific concepts, for example boats, courses, treatments and services.
We also have to deal with related items that do not necessarily have their own navigable page but certainly contribute to a page’s content. Representing them as individual things makes it easy for content creators to create or edit them or simply to change the order in which they appear. Common things we face repeatedly are partners, accreditations, testimonials, FAQ items etc.
Sometimes websites require a strict hierarchical structure such as nested pages, categories, folders or departments.
In other cases, we need a very flexible hierarchy - one in which items can appear in multiple places within the hierarchy based on context - such as places to visit, things to do, experiences to have or simply great things to eat.
We may also need to sell things so that we need to represent categories, products, a shopping basket and a checkout process.
Cubane supports a set of organisational structures that support all those different use cases to organise your content. It’s up to you to pick one or a combination of those concepts that best fits your project.
The Cubane philosophy¶
Building websites that deliver a great user experience for visitors and content editors alike - but are also high performant at the same time - is a complex task; To do it continuously on a deadline is really only possible if you have a set of tools that get you there.
