Blog posts timeline of static school landing page website work done off-and-on from mid Jan 2026 to Feb 2026

The blog posts timeline is chronological.

Summary

Blog Posts Timeline Summary: Static School Landing Page Website Development (Jan – Feb 2026 off-and-on)


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Details

Note: This timeline does not include Blogger LMS themes, which may be documented separately. Based on my static school website development work from mid-January to February 2026, I have concluded that while Blogger provides free hosting, its proprietary templating system is not properly documented and imposes significant development constraints compared to modern frameworks like Next.js or Astro (utilized with GitHub Pages). 

For a static school website—where design flexibility, component reuse, and SEO are priorities—Blogger may not be the ideal solution. However, for a Learning Management System (LMS), Blogger’s built-in Content Management System (CMS) provides a user-friendly interface for content updates that remains a distinct advantage. In contrast, an Astro or Next.js-based LMS requires additional software development to implement similar management features, though Astro’s native support for Markdown and MDX significantly streamlines the handling of static content.

The description part of below entries is very limited and focused on static school website development work. Some of the posts cover a lot of design and architecture related discussions which I am completely omitting in the very short description.


Overall, this is a very pragmatic, low-risk, and industry-aligned solution for a small rural school that may grow over time.
  • Mainly static school website design
  • Uses Next.js in a static way
  • May use free-tier hosted Blogger blog or GHP-hosted JSON as a pseudo-headless backend
  • Next.js site (frontend) is hosted on free-tier GHP
  • Zero hosting costs for school

The post covers what is mentioned in the title. It also covers how such modified code (with my proprietary modifications) can be licenses individually to customers.


Simple school website – testschoolws – Current Architecture


            ↓ Admin edits and publishes content

    Standalone Data Site (GitHub Pages)   https://ravisiyer.github.io/testschoolws-data
            /data/data.json

            ↓ Client-side fetch at runtime

    Live Education Website (Static Site on GitHub Pages)  https://ravisiyer.github.io/testschoolwspub

Main Features
  • Static HTML/CSS/JS exported by Next.js (output: export)
  • Client components fetch data/data.json
  • Text labels, menus, courses, mentors, testimonials are data-driven
  • Content updates require no rebuild of the website
  • Admin users can update content via CMS UI
    • Requires GitHub login with write access to the associated public GitHub data repository: https://github.com/ravisiyer/testschoolws-data.
    • After admin edit, school website will show updated data if browser data is hard-refreshed (Ctrl + F5 on Chrome).
  • Private GitHub source repo for school website: https://github.com/ravisiyer/testschoolws

Best technical solution for static medium size site with skilled developer
Next.js/React/Astro (React components are optional for Astro) static medium size education site is the best technical solution when skilled developer is available and long-term control + extensibility matters. A variety of hosting options become available including free hosting on GitHub Pages for static version, and variety of easier upgrade options in future to full stack dynamic site using paid hosting (not GitHub Pages) become available.

The efforts I put in over the past around two weeks with the si-education Nextjs template from ThemeWagon: https://themewagon.com/themes/si-education/ to build a test static school website, ran into an unclear MIT license wall. A quote from associated post of mine explains the issue: "The intent seems to be MIT license as per the README but MIT LICENSE file is absent in the repo. That seems to be an issue. Unless this issue is resolved, it will be inappropriate to consider si-education template as a base for commercial work." ... "Update: I tried to get some clarifications on the issue but did not get any response."

That led me to do some exploration and brainstorming with help from ChatGPT. As this is a sensitive topic, I have captured that exchange in a private NextJSTemplateSelection.docx document. 
...

Final verdict (by ChatGPT)
I fully endorse your refined criteria:
✔ Vercel/Next.js org templates → safe
✔ Marketplace presence → necessary but not sufficient
✔ Sponsored, long-lived community projects → acceptable with disclosure
✔ Hand-rolled code + popular npm packages → ideal for simple sites
✔ Your approach minimizes legal risk and preserves ethical clarity

This led me to drop using the si-education next.js template and explore using a template from Vercel/next.js. Sometime later the admin for si-education next.js template did respond and I came to know of another related template which had MIT license. But by this time, I had already got my derived from Vercel/Next.js org general (not school specific) landing page template done and decided to stick with that.


This post is about a general landing page template that I created by stripping down a Tier-1 (Vercel/Nextjs org) Next.js template to my minimal needs. IIRC its main branch (in private repo: https://github.com/ravisiyer/stripdowncomm) is for a dynamic site (with original template also being dynamic). I also created a static branch which is a conversion of dynamic site code to static. It is not specific to a school but was used later as the base and customized for a static school landing page/website. Note that the big benefit of a static site as compared to a dynamic site, is that it can be hosted free on GitHub Pages.

GitHub Source repo (private): https://github.com/ravisiyer/stripdowncomm
 
Hostinger domain https://raviiyerss.in is mapped to https://ravisiyer.github.io/stripdowncommghp which may have:
Private ChatGPT chat docs on PC: stripdowncomm-CG1.docx and stripdowncomm-CG2.docx

Advantages of using stripped down version of Tier-1 template for landing/home page template
  • Quality alignment: Using (Tier-1) ensures code aligns with Next.js standards, future-proofing your work.
  • Minimal risk: MIT license + controlled strip-down → commercial-safe static site.
  • Efficiency: Instead of writing everything yourself, you get:
    • Working responsive UI
    • Hamburger menu already styled
    • Tailwind + Headless UI patterns pre-applied
  • Learning bonus: While stripping, you understand a production-grade Next.js + App Router + Tailwind setup. Later, this knowledge translates to real --snipped-- projects.

I ran into quite a few issues with conversion of dynamic landing page app (stripdowncomm app in above mentioned blog post) to static. In that context, ChatGPT mentioned that Astro may be a good option for static sites. 
This post covers my learning/getting exposed to Astro.

Preact in context of Astro and also in general Created February 06, 2026, Last updated on 7 Feb 2026

Post on learning/getting exposed to Preact

Notes about Markdown issues and solutions Created February 12, 2026, Last updated on 5 Mar. 2026

General post on topic mentioned in title.



Private ChatGPT chat doc on PC: stripdowncomm-astro-conv.docx
IIRC this post covers my conversion of the static branch of https://github.com/ravisiyer/stripdowncomm project in above mentioned post from Next.js to Astro.
This continued to be a general purpose static landing page (not specific to a school).

Notes on creating a simple static school landing page site using my Astro template Created February 22, 2026, Last updated on 24 Feb 2026

Static school landing page site

Initially I wanted to see if I could quickly find some other Astro template that I could use to create a simple static landing page site for a primary & secondary education (K-12) rural Indian school. So I did some searching for it but could not find something suitable.

Then I took the simple Astro landing page template stripdowncomm-astro covered in above mentioned post as a base and copied it as ssw-astro (standing for static school website - astro). This post covers the initial version of the static school website.
I used Google Jules with this prompt:
  • I have a dummy Indian rural school website data in this Astro app. I would like the data in Features and About sections to be changed to a hypothetical (sample) rural Indian school (primary & secondary level/K-12).
I used the above https://github.com/ravisiyer/ssw-astro repo as the input repo to Jules.

It did the job well! While the programming task I asked Google Jules to do was very simple, it had to go through all the steps of: 
  • Studying project code (multiple files)
  • Modifying the correct components with suitable generated text for Features and About sections which earlier had dummy content
  • Building the app
  • Running it and verifying the output
  • Creating a GitHub PR request
After verifying the changes myself on my PC, I deployed the very simple site with changes at https://ravisiyer.github.io/ssw-astroghp/.


I used the above https://github.com/ravisiyer/ssw-astro repo as the active repo for Antigravity.

Overview of my simple task trial of Antigravity with a very simple Astro static landing page site
  • 1st prompt: The app contains a Support page. I want to remove it. Also footer and any other menu links to Support page should be removed.
  • Took quite some time. Faced agent crash! But it understood the requirement, identified which files have to be changed/deleted, and did those changes which included deletion of a file for which it sought specific approval from me.
  • 2nd prompt: The code changes for removing support page are done. Can you test whether the app is working correctly?
  • It tested the app, verified its results and provided a verification report. The app worked as expected.
  • So it seems to have done a proper agentic workflow even though it crashed after 1st prompt.
Live site: https://ravisiyer.github.io/ssw-astroghp/ site was updated with above changes and works as expected.

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