[help] simplest stack for website that writes and reads from a db
Hi All,
Like many of you, I want to test many ideas by spinning up simple webpages to validate some assumptions with users.
For most of them, the underlying pattern is a simple web page, like a landing page, that writes and reads into a database.
I have not yet found a simple stack that allows me to spin such pages fast, ideally with minimal or no coding required. I'm looking for something like LAMP in the old days of web development, but with readily available online tools. Any thoughts?
One example is: a static website hosted on AWS, Airtable as a database, the two connect with Airtable APIs. This is not ideal as there are heavy limitations on querying and exposing data with Airtable. Plus, no-ready made support for integrations and SEO, tracking features that other solutions have.
To keep the conversation concrete, what are your suggestion for the following use case:
- plain landing page
- one form to submit a new record in the database
- one button to get a random value from the database.
Thanks a lot in advance, IHs.
Hi,
Why not just using Worpress? Fast to build, no code and ready for SEO?
Hah that's funny, are you using this site to validate ideas? I've had an idea for so long, a website builder that's used for others to validate ideas on.
Integrates with airtable, mail chimp, lambda functions etc. right out the gate. Sounds like you're looking for something like this
@sosa067 that's what I'm basically trying to do, if I find a stack that allows me to do that, then I have all I need to validate the idea and serialize the approach as needed whenever new ideas come out.
Hey @fady,
I like explaining what I do and recommend what I'd do, so here we are, in the hope it helps.
First of all I hard differentiate between marketing and application pages.
Marketing pages are pages like landing pages, faqs, use-cases or whatever else is used to communicate with the target audiences.
Those pages should be easily created, extendable, exportable and should be low in maintenance.
That's why I prefer using a CMS for those pages. Just setting it up, tweaking a theme, and we are ready.
I recommend nowadays WordPress because of 4 things:
Besides marketing pages, we are leaving the area of no-code.
In case your product is a SAAS or provides a custom API then some specialized application can help.
Depending on your tech stack NodeJs? PHP? GO? Java? Python?
In every case I recommend to build stuff from scratch as much as possible. And using third party dependencies little as possible.
That's a matter of containing control over your application, but also means more cost to build stuff.
For spinning stuff easily we need to think about architecture. One thing every application/website benefits from is having something like a middleware.
A middleware basically adds layers in to and out of your application.
With the help of a middleware you do things. For example authenticate, validate, route, sign/unsign, and many other things are possible.
Most frameworks (for example nest.js, Laravel, Symfony, Spring (interceptor) or django) have some kind of middleware and make use of it.
Frameworks usually also come with a lot of additional tools.
For example libraries which help to store stuff into databases. For example: Laravel comes with Eloquent and Symfony with Doctrine, both are libraries of the same kind (ORMs) and help sending database queries/statements.
It might be a good starter point to find a framework in your language of choice and get your hands wet with it.
In any case we need somewhere, somehow an environment to build stuff. I prefer a three staged system.
For the rest of this comment I assume we are talking about local environments.
Nowadays we can use docker or virtual machines or just install stuff on the machine.
I don't recommend installing stuff on your machine instead use either docker based environments or Vagrant Boxes.
In both cases look out for configurable stacks. For example:
Both tools let you easily spin up stuff like an elastic server, go very minimal by just using an apache server or extend to a complete custom stack.
Docker based stacks could be beneficial once you want to scale. That's because some tools nowadays make use of a docker setup. For example github actions, bitbucket pipelines, codeship, kubernetes, ...
Those tools can help you to automate the process of deploying, testing or even hosting your application.
That said, I don't recommend a starter to care about those things but to look for hosters which provide a managed way for services the application needs and to focus on learning as much as possible on the way building the first applications.
Especially deep diving into how those frameworks secure applications.
Lets sum up:
Good luck, man.
@smoothie, Marc, I'm overwhelmed by the length and details of your response. That's basically IH, a great and collaborative community!
I'll take some time to digest the information, but I can already say that I'm of two minds here.
On one end, I would like to find a no-code approach to streamline my approach and do not think of anything in the likes of maintenance, uptime, etc.
On the other end, most of my ideas are implemented as web apps, and I haven't found any no-code options that give you enough flexibility in managing dynamic pages.
I used Django in the past, both with rendered pages and also in combination with react. Honestly, my current life and professional setup took me away from coding. I have less time than in the past, so I'm intrigued by solution that could avoid code and provide a lot of flexibility, which might not exist by definition. There is definitely a gap in the market, though. Or maybe solutions like softr.io are not yet in their early days.
Write and read from a CSV file instead of a database.
No database connections and structures to set up.
Easy to view.
A bit harder to do ... well a lot of things.
Mostly it's the ease and flexibility to change the structure that I like.
Consider sqlite if you dont want to manage a full power database.
Hey @fady! I think you should be able to do the above with a single tool. We built WeBase to support this use case as well as building out more sophisticated web applications.
Check out our templates here if you are still interested: https://www.webase.com/website-templates
It is easy to add forms to webpages using the tool. Feel free to reach out if you have questions!
Thanks for reaching out @harrisreynolds, I had a quick look and it sounds interesting The template apps do not match what I want to do, so I need to take some time to look deeper. Is there a trial? also the included features under the pricing packages are very unclear to me. (we can continue this offline too, check my email on the profile.)
index.php
Can you give me an example of
"one button to get a random value from the database."
@volkandkaya here's the example:
Rails?
I can confidentially say that I’ve tried every tool in the box 🙃
If you’re truly looking for a quick landing page then Unbounce might do the trick.
If you’re looking for a more customizable solution that’s crazy robust, I’d consider Elementor builder. An amazing page builder made for Wordpress. It’ll allow you to spin up beautiful landing pages or even full blown sites in hours to days. The entire process of getting Elementor and Wordpress going can be done without a single piece of code. And with the use of Elementor templates, you’re essentially up and running with a landing page or site within a few clicks.
Feel free to reach out if you need help! 🚀
On the code-heavy (though not very heavy) side, Firebase comes to mind since you get hosting and a simple database all in one nice package, but you definitely need code.
On the landing-page focused side of things there's tons of landing page builders, HubSpot has one, Mailchimp, Unbounce, Instapage, Carrd, others I've surely forgotten, etc.
For whatever it's worth, if LAMP still appeals to you, it still exists. There's tons of hosts out there still providing that.
A simple landing page+database does have a certain appeal though, and I've wanted something similar myself previously. Maybe it's worth building such a service?
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.