🗂️ archive! this site was live 2020 - Dec, 2023

welcome! Unlock NYC builds digital tools to make the apartment search process transparent, fair, and free from discrimination for all New Yorkers.

🤖🏡 This project hosts our main website.

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platforms

• front-end/CMS: we use Forestry to edit content in Markdown files. Any changes in Forestry are automatically committed to this repo.

• deployment/hosting: we use Netlify to serve the website over the net - it's automatically set up to trigger a build whenever anything in this repo changes.

• static site generator: this site is built with 11ty!

• staging/back-end edits: we use Glitch to make edits, preview and share them, and then export them to this repo.

• functions: we use Netlify functions to authenticate advocates who have logins and are reporting on behalf of others

project structure

• in the_includes folder, you'll find all the site's template files, written in Liquid. When 11ty runs, it uses these files to generate HTML pages and stores them in a folder called build. You won't see the build folder in this repo! It's generated every time 11ty runs, and hidden via the .gitignore file.

• the rest of the .md files are the content, either pulled from various places (for example, the bios folder holds content that gets displayed on the About page, via the about.liquid template) or simply from the root folder. 11ty takes any Markdown file and turns it into a folder with a corresponding index.html. For example, press.md turns into a folder (/press) with an index (/press/index.html) inside it, so that the URL https://weunlock.nyc/press works.

• the styles folder holds site.css - other css files are inside the _includes folder, so that they can be pulled onto specific pages via Liquid templates. When they are pulled via template files, the css files are minified.

• the scripts folder holds any site-wide javascript

• .eleventy.js is the 11ty configuration file - it sets the output folder to build, and allows for the styles and scripts folders to be bundled into the output folder too so we can use them.

installation & contributing

• you can Remix this project in Glitch, to create your own dev environment to play with. This will install everything from package.json, all dependencies and configurations, etc. When you make a change in Glitch, it automatically runs 11ty and generates the static site on the Glitch URL only.

• alternatively, you can use https://unlock-nyc-web.glitch.me as a staging environment - as long as you use branches in case multiple Unlock people are working on it at once!

• before working in Glitch, make sure the project is up-to-date with the Github repo first!! This is important - Forestry writes content and Markdown edits to the Github repo automatically, but this does not sync with the Glitch project. You need to find the Tools menu in the lower left, choose "Import and Export," and then "Import from Github."

• when you are ready to push changes to the website, choose the Tools menu again, and this time "Export to Github." This will create a branch called glitch in the Github repo, and you can create a pull request to double-check your changes before merging with the main production branch. You should delete the glitch branch when you are finished.

• once you merge to main, the changes are deployed automatically via Netlify. You can check the Netlify dashboard to follow the status of the deploy/build.

documentation you might want to read

• Forestry documentation - for configuring the CMS

• 11ty documentation - there's so much here, if you go digging!

• Glitch to Github example

fun tools you might need

🛠 feel free to add to this list!

🤖✊thanks!