Automating Web Site Updates: a Case Study

I was presented with a problem recently: automate the process of updating a web site when new contributions come in. The contributions are articles, in markdown format, and they need to be translated to web pages, inserted into the site’s content, and parts of the site (such as index pages) need to be updated accordingly. The contributors don’t have full publishing authority on their own – each submitted article is reviewed and perhaps sent for editing before it is accepted. The translation from markdown to web format can be done by an automated tool, but is usually run by hand by an editor.

The goal: automate this process as fully as possible. My goal: build a solution with cloud-native, preferably serverless, technology.

I’m going to take the next several blog posts to go over my approach to the problem and the eventual solution. I hope to get a new post up every few days. Stay tuned.