# Giving schoolcompare a human author: an About page and a blog

**Date:** 2026-09-02
**Status:** Design — awaiting review
**Scope:** A named author for the site, an `/about` page, and a Payload-CMS-backed
blog at `/blog`.

## Why

The site reads as synthetic. Not because of its tone, but because of three
specific absences:

1. **Nobody is accountable for the numbers.** There is no author, no statement
   of why the site exists, and no one who can be wrong. The only human trace on
   the entire site is `contact@schoolcompare.co.uk` in the footer.
2. **No visible judgement.** Every figure is presented as though it fell out of
   a machine. Hundreds of editorial decisions went into this codebase — which
   metrics to show, when a benchmark is invalid, what to suppress — and not one
   of them is visible to a reader. `isSpecialSchool()` silently drops the
   England comparison for special schools and PRUs because that comparison is
   meaningless; nowhere does the site *say* so.
3. **The voice is institutional third person.** "schoolcompare brings it all
   into one place." "Built for parents, governors, journalists." That is
   brochure register, and it is precisely the register that machine-generated
   content defaults to.

There is a second, independent reason. The SEO programme
(`2026-08-20-seo-programme-design.md`) defines eight workstreams and none of
them address E-E-A-T or authorship. School performance data is YMYL territory;
an anonymous site republishing DfE figures has no authorship signal at all. This
work fills that hole, and the blog gives W6 (explainer content) somewhere to
live.

### The failure mode to avoid

The standard fix — a stock photo and "Hi, I'm Tudor, and I'm passionate about
education!" — reads as *more* synthetic than the current coldness. Manufactured
warmth is a stronger machine-tell than plain institutional voice. Everything
here has to be specific, occasionally awkward, and willing to be unflattering,
or it makes the problem worse.

## Positioning

The author is **Tudor**: first name only, real photograph, no surname, no
employer named.

The credibility claim is deliberately **not** educational expertise. The About
page states plainly: *"I'm not an education expert."* Authority comes from two
things that are actually true:

- **Experience.** A parent going through primary admissions in south-west London
  right now. Google's E-E-A-T leads with Experience, and lived experience of the
  thing is exactly what the DfE's own service lacks.
- **Method.** Every number's provenance is stated, so a reader can check the
  site rather than trust it.

This is more durable than borrowed expertise: it cannot be undermined by someone
noticing the author has no teaching qualification.

**Consequence for the design.** A `Person` entity with no surname is a weak
search signal and cannot be corroborated off-site. The credibility load
therefore shifts onto the methodology being visibly rigorous. That is a design
constraint, not a caveat — it is why the About page carries a substantial
"how this is built and where it can be wrong" section rather than a short bio.

### Voice rules

Applied to About and every post. Recorded here so the voice does not drift.

- First person singular. "I built", not "we provide".
- Concrete over general. "when we were looking at schools in Wandsworth" beats
  any amount of stated warmth.
- State limits before someone else finds them. Every post that presents a
  metric says what it does not show.
- No mission statements, no "passionate about", no invented team.
- No em dashes. One of the clearest tells of machine-written prose, which is
  the exact problem this work exists to fix.
- Short sentences. The existing code comments in this repo are already written
  this way; the prose should match.

## Scope

**In:**

- `/about` — a coded page (not CMS-managed).
- `/blog` and `/blog/[slug]` — Payload-backed, with an index and post pages.
- Payload CMS installed into the existing Next application.
- Footer and navigation links to both.
- `Person`, `Organization`, `BlogPosting`, `BreadcrumbList` JSON-LD.
- RSS feed and sitemap integration.
- One first post, so the blog does not launch empty.

**Out (deliberately):**

- Rewriting existing homepage/how-it-works copy into first person. Worth doing,
  but it would double the review surface of this PR. Separate change.
- In-product signed notes on school pages (the "distributed humanity" idea).
  Revisit once About and the blog exist.
- Comments, newsletter, author accounts beyond one.
- A team page. There is no team.

## Architecture

### Topology

Payload 3 installs **into the existing Next application** and serves `/admin`
from the same container. One image, one deploy, no new service. This is
Payload 3's native model and it makes on-demand revalidation trivial, because
the CMS hooks run in the same process as the Next cache.

Accepted costs: the public site's image now carries Payload, so a CMS security
patch redeploys the whole site; and the image grows substantially.

### Two collisions that must be handled

**1. `/api` is already taken.** `app/api/[...path]/route.ts` is a catch-all that
proxies `/api/*` to FastAPI at runtime. Payload's default API route is also
`/api`. Left alone, these fight, and the failure is not clean — the catch-all
would swallow Payload's admin API calls and forward them to FastAPI.

Payload's API route is therefore remapped:

```ts
routes: { api: '/cms-api', admin: '/admin' }
```

with its route group at `app/(payload)/cms-api/[...slug]/route.ts`. The
`/cms-api` prefix must also be added to the FastAPI proxy's excluded-paths list
as a defensive second line.

**2. `next.config.js` is CommonJS.** Payload's `withPayload()` wrapper is ESM
only. The config must become `next.config.mjs`, converting `module.exports` to
`export default` and wrapping the export. All existing content — the standalone
output, `outputFileTracingIncludes`, the staging `X-Robots-Tag` header block,
the CSP — carries over unchanged. This is mechanical but it touches the file
that controls staging's noindex, so it needs care and an explicit test.

### Database

Payload uses the existing `sc_database` Postgres instance, in its **own
`payload` schema**:

```ts
db: postgresAdapter({
  pool: { connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL },
  schemaName: 'payload',
})
```

The frontend container is already on the `backend` Docker network, so it can
reach `sc_database:5432` with no networking change. It needs a new
`DATABASE_URL` environment variable.

Schema isolation is not cosmetic. `public` currently holds the application
tables and Airflow's metadata, and `scripts/migrate_csv_to_db.py --drop` exists
to drop and reimport. Blog content living in its own schema means no data
pipeline operation can destroy it.

**Verified 2026-09-02** (this was an open question when the spec was written).
`--drop` calls `run_full_migration()` in `backend/migration.py`, which drops
exactly two tables by name:

```python
ks2_tables = ["school_results", "schools"]
for tname in ks2_tables:
    if tname in existing:
        Base.metadata.tables[tname].drop(bind=engine)
```

There is no `Base.metadata.drop_all()` anywhere in `backend/`, and no
`DROP SCHEMA`. The only other drop is `_apply_schema_drops()`, a single
schema-qualified `DROP TABLE IF EXISTS marts.fact_parent_view CASCADE`.
Nothing sets `search_path`, so the SQLAlchemy metadata resolves to `public`,
and `inspector.get_table_names()` does not even enumerate other schemas.

So the guarantee is stronger than schema isolation alone: `--drop` targets two
named tables that Payload does not have, and would not reach `posts`, `media`
or `users` even if they shared a schema. The `payload` schema remains the right
choice — it protects against a *future* broadening of that script rather than
today's behaviour — but the safety claim rests on verified code, not on
assumption.

Putting CMS tables in this instance is consistent with existing practice —
Airflow already stores its metadata there.

### Migrations

Payload's Postgres adapter auto-pushes schema in development and requires
explicit migrations in production. Use `prodMigrations`, which runs pending
migrations during server initialisation:

```ts
db: postgresAdapter({ /* ... */, prodMigrations: migrations })
```

This is preferred over a one-shot init container (the `airflow-init` pattern)
because the app is a single long-running process and there is no ordering
problem to solve. Migration files are generated with `payload migrate:create`
and committed, so schema changes travel through the same PR and staging gate as
code.

### Media

Uploads go to a Docker named volume, consistent with `postgres_data`,
`typesense_data` and `airflow_logs`.

- `staticDir` must be an **absolute** path in Payload 3: `/app/media`.
- The container runs as `nextjs` (uid 1001). The Dockerfile must
  `mkdir -p /app/media && chown nextjs:nodejs /app/media` **before** the volume
  is mounted, or Docker will create the mountpoint root-owned and every upload
  will fail with EACCES.
- `sharp` moves from `devDependencies` to `dependencies` — Payload needs it at
  runtime to generate `imageSizes`.
- The volume must be added to the backup routine alongside Postgres. A blog
  post's images are not reproducible from the pipeline.

### Rendering

**Constraint:** CI builds the image with no database reachable. Blog pages
therefore cannot use build-time `generateStaticParams` — that would either fail
the build or bake in an empty post list.

Instead: ISR. Post and index pages declare a `revalidate` window and render on
first request, with Payload `afterChange` / `afterDelete` hooks calling
`revalidatePath('/blog')` and `revalidatePath('/blog/' + slug)` for immediate
publication. Because Payload runs in the same process, the hook calls
`revalidatePath` from `next/cache` directly — no webhook, no shared secret.

The ISR cache lives on container disk and is cleared by a redeploy. For a
single container serving a handful of posts this is fine.

### Collections

- **`posts`** — `title`, `slug`, `publishedAt`, `excerpt`, `heroImage`
  (relation to `media`), `content` (Lexical rich text), `seo` group
  (`metaTitle`, `metaDescription`), `_status` (drafts enabled).
- **`media`** — upload collection, `alt` required, `imageSizes` for thumbnail
  and hero widths, public read access.
- **`users`** — Payload's auth collection. One account. Public creation
  disabled.

Drafts are enabled so posts can be written over several sittings and previewed
before publication.

**Payload Blocks** are how posts embed live product components — a real trend
chart or comparison table inside a post, rendered from live data rather than
screenshotted. This is the main thing the CMS has to earn back against
file-based MDX, and it directly serves the goal: showing judgement in context.
Ship with one block (a callout/aside for "what this number doesn't tell you");
add a live-chart block once a post needs it.

### Security

`/admin` is the first authenticated surface on this site. Public, hardened:

- `PAYLOAD_SECRET` — long, random, set in the Portainer stack environment, never
  committed. The same variable must exist in staging with a *different* value.
- Strong unique password on the single admin account.
- Login rate limiting via Payload's `maxLoginAttempts` / `lockTime`.
- `X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow` on `/admin/*` and `/cms-api/*`, and a
  `robots.ts` disallow. The admin panel must never be indexed.
- Public user creation disabled; no open registration.
- Verify the existing CSP `frame-ancestors` directive does not break the admin
  panel.

Residual risk, accepted: a future Payload authentication CVE is live against the
public internet. Mitigation is prompt patching, which the staging→prod pipeline
already supports. If this becomes uncomfortable, restricting `/admin` at the
proxy to LAN/VPN is a one-line change later.

Staging note: staging runs the same image on `stx.`, so it gets its own admin
panel and its own database. It must have its own `PAYLOAD_SECRET` and its own
credentials — never production's.

## Deployment changes

- `nextjs-app/Dockerfile` — create and chown `/app/media`; ensure Payload's
  admin bundle and `sharp` survive standalone output file tracing.
- `docker-compose.portainer.yml` and the staging equivalent — add
  `DATABASE_URL` and `PAYLOAD_SECRET` to the `frontend` service, add a
  `payload_media` volume mounted at `/app/media`, and add
  `depends_on: sc_database`.
- Document both new environment variables in the compose header comment block,
  which is where this stack records its configuration.

## SEO

- `Person` (Tudor, with photo) and `Organization` JSON-LD on `/about`.
- `BlogPosting` + `BreadcrumbList` on post pages, with `author` referencing the
  same `Person`.
- Canonical URLs on `/blog` and every post.
- Posts and `/about` added to the existing sitemap (`app/sitemap.xml/route.ts`
  and `app/sitemaps/[...parts]`). Post URLs come from Payload at request time.
- RSS feed at `/blog/rss.xml`.
- Footer links to both pages, under a new "About" column.

**Navigation is deliberately left alone.** `Navigation.tsx` renders a bottom tab
bar on mobile that already carries four items (Search, Compare, Rankings,
Admissions). A fifth tab makes each one cramped at 320px, and About and Blog are
both lower-intent than any of the four. Both live in the footer; About
additionally gets a byline link from every post, which is where a reader who
cares actually asks the question. Revisit only if analytics show people hunting
for it.

## Testing

Unit (Jest):

- Post rendering, including a post with no hero image and one with no excerpt.
- Slug generation and collision handling.
- JSON-LD shape for `BlogPosting` and `Person`.
- The `next.config.mjs` conversion preserves the staging `X-Robots-Tag` rule —
  this guards the riskiest mechanical change in the plan.

E2E (Playwright, `e2e/`, required by CLAUDE.md for user-facing change):

- `/about` renders, shows the author name and photo, and is reachable from the
  footer and nav.
- `/blog` lists at least one post; clicking through reaches the post.
- A post page renders title, date, body and byline.
- `/admin` responds with `noindex` and does not leak a stack trace when
  unauthenticated.

Note the known constraint: new journeys cannot be proven in PR checks, because
the staging E2E gate runs post-merge.

## Risks

| Risk | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| `next.config.mjs` conversion silently drops the staging noindex header, making staging a crawlable duplicate | Unit test asserting the header rule; verify on staging before promotion |
| Payload API route collides with the FastAPI `/api` proxy | Remap to `/cms-api`; add to the proxy's exclusion list |
| Media volume mounts root-owned; all uploads fail with EACCES | `mkdir`+`chown` in the Dockerfile before the mount; test an upload on staging |
| Build fails or bakes empty content because CI has no DB | No build-time DB access; ISR only |
| A pipeline `--drop` destroys blog content | Separate `payload` schema; verify `--drop` blast radius before building |
| Media volume not backed up; images unrecoverable | Add `payload_media` to the backup routine |
| Payload auth CVE exposed publicly | Prompt patching; proxy restriction available as a fallback |
| Blog launches empty or goes stale | Ship with one post; cadence is explicitly "a few times a year", so no cadence is promised anywhere on the page — no dates implying a schedule |

## Sequence

Each step is independently reviewable and mergeable.

1. **Payload foundation** — install, `next.config.mjs` conversion, `payload`
   schema, `/cms-api` remap, `users` collection, `/admin` hardening, compose and
   Dockerfile changes. No public-facing change yet. Verify on staging that the
   site is unchanged and `/admin` works.
2. **`/about`** — coded page, photo, `Person`/`Organization` JSON-LD, footer and
   nav links, e2e journey. Independently valuable and does not depend on the
   blog.
3. **Blog** — `posts` and `media` collections, `/blog` index and post pages, ISR
   plus revalidation hooks, RSS, sitemap, structured data, e2e journeys.
4. **First post** — written in the admin panel, published through the normal
   flow, proving the whole path end to end.

Step 1 carries all the infrastructure risk and none of the visible benefit, so
it should be verified on staging carefully before step 2 starts.

## Dependencies on Tudor

- **A photograph.** Blocks step 2. Nothing else in the plan is blocked by it.
- **The first post's subject.** Blocks step 4 only. Suggested: what school
  performance data cannot tell you — it demonstrates judgement, is genuinely
  useful, and is the kind of thing an anonymous or machine-written site will not
  publish.
- ~~Confirmation that `scripts/migrate_csv_to_db.py --drop` is schema-scoped.~~
  **Resolved 2026-09-02** — verified in `backend/migration.py`; see the
  Database section. No action needed.