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Welcome to Head start

Head Start is a base setup on top of headless services to help you quickly start a new website.

Philosophy

  • Provide a generic template to help develop new websites (not web apps) faster.

  • Provide a pre-defined setup for composable pages with common components.

  • Provide pre-configured services like a CMS and deployment platform.

  • Support common needs like internationalisation (i18n), SEO, redirects and analytics.

  • Provide functional interactivity without a JS framework (React, Vue, Svelte, etc)*.

  • Provide functional interactivity without specific styling ("unstyled")*.

  • Provide a fully accessible and highly performant baseline for every project.

* We'll leave the choice for a JS framework and strategy for styling to developers using Head Start for their project.

Architecture

The site is created as lightweight progressively enhanced website connected to a headless CMS:

  • Astro - web framework to structure this project. Astro is selected because it embraces web standards, is designed for performance, and supports all our favourite UI frameworks (React, Vue and Svelte).

  • DatoCMS - a headless CMS is connected to manage web content. DatoCMS is selected for its modular and structured content options, advanced image service, multi-language support and GraphQL API.

  • Cloudflare Pages - is a JAMstack hosting platform. Cloudflare Pages is selected for its reliable CDN, zero cold-start workers, green hosting and affordable pricing.

Documentation