82 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
82 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
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# Publishing to the blog
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The blog is Payload CMS, running inside the Next.js app. There is no separate
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service and no second deploy — writing a post is done in the browser and takes
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effect on the live site within seconds.
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## Signing in
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`https://www.schoolcompare.co.uk/admin` — one account, no registration. If you
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need the account seeded on a fresh environment, run against the container:
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```bash
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npx payload create-first-user
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```
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Staging has its own admin panel, its own database and its own credentials at
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`https://stx.schoolcompare.co.uk/admin`. Never reuse production's secret or
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password there.
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## Writing a post
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**Posts → Create New.** The fields:
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| Field | Notes |
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|---|---|
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| **Title** | The `<h1>` and the browser tab. |
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| **Slug** | The URL segment, in the sidebar. **Never change it after publishing** — it is the canonical URL, and changing it breaks every existing link and discards the page's accumulated search signal. |
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| **Published at** | The date shown on the post and in the feed. |
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| **Excerpt** | Max 200 characters. Shown on the index *and* used as the meta description, so write it as a standalone sentence rather than a teaser. |
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| **Hero image** | Optional. Becomes the social share image; without one, the site's generated card is used. |
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| **Content** | Rich text. `/` inserts a block. |
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**Save as draft** while you're working — drafts are not public. **Publish** when
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it's ready.
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### The callout block
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One custom block, `Callout`, with two tones:
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- **Caveat** — what a number does *not* show. This is the one that matters: it
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is how a post states a limitation in context rather than burying it in a
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closing paragraph.
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- **Note** — a useful aside.
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### Images
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Every image requires alt text; the editor will not let you save without it.
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Uploads go to a Docker volume on the host, which is backed up separately from
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Postgres — an image is not reproducible from the pipeline the way school data
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is.
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## How publishing reaches the live site
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- `/blog`, `/blog/rss.xml` and `/content-sitemap.xml` are rendered per request,
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so a new post appears immediately.
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- `/blog/[slug]` is cached after its first request. Publishing or editing fires
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a `revalidatePath` from the collection's `afterChange` hook, which drops that
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cached copy — so edits appear immediately too.
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If a change doesn't show, it is far more likely the post is still a draft than
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that the cache is stale.
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## House style
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These rules are why the blog exists. A post that ignores them makes the site
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read more machine-generated, not less.
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- **First person singular.** "I built", "I found" — never "we provide".
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- **Concrete over general.** "When we were looking at schools in Wandsworth"
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beats any amount of stated warmth.
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- **State limits before someone else finds them.** Every post that presents a
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metric says what it does not show. This is the single strongest signal that a
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human wrote it: generated content does not volunteer its own weaknesses.
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- **No mission statements, no "passionate about", no invented team.** There is
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one person here.
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- **Short sentences.**
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- **Never publish a surname, an employer, or a child's name.** The site's author
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is "Tudor". See `/about`.
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- **Never invent a figure**, even illustratively. On a site whose whole
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proposition is official data, a made-up number attached to a real school is
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the one thing it cannot do — and no illustrative intent survives being
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screenshotted.
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