Description

This is the website for Baltimore Corgis, a community of Corgis, owners, and friends!

After starting with a Facebook page, then a drag-and-drop website builder, the organizer of Baltimore Corgis decided to move to a more customized and performant solution for their website.

In February 2023, I built the first version of the new Baltimore Corgis website, using the existing/previous website's design. While implementing the existing features into a custom solution, I made the following improvements:

• Set up Sanity CMS to store and easily edit content like events, members, etc.
• Reduced page loading time by 75%
• Fine-tuned responsive resizing
• Improved accessibility
• Implemented custom fonts
• Made it easier to add changes or third-party integrations in the future

February 2025 Update

Two years later, I rebuilt the website with a new tech stack to enhance performance, maintainability, and future scalability.

• Migrated from Gatsby.js to Next.js 15
• Built with React Server Components
• Refactored to TypeScript
• Improved Sanity CMS setup and editing experience
• Implemented Sanity Live API for real-time content updates

Performance Improvements

• Optimized images for faster loading
• Optimized custom fonts for faster loading and consistent styling
• Implemented lazy loading and blur-up for images to improve initial page load times
• Implemented prefetching for internal pages to improve navigation speed
• Utilized React Server Components to reduce client-side JavaScript

Accessibility Enhancements

• Added hover states for improved user feedback
• Implemented focus styles for better keyboard navigation
• Improved focus tab order for better accessibility
• Implemented responsive resizing to support zoom up to 500%
• Added alt text and ARIA labels for improved accessibility

SEO Improvements

• Provided full control over metadata for each page
• Improved page speed loading for better organic search engine ranking
• Utilized semantic HTML for better search engine crawling and ranking
• Implemented canonical URLs
• Implemented robots.txt
• Implemented sitemap

Tools Used

• React
• Tailwind
• Next.js
• GitHub
• Sanity CMS
• Vercel

What's Next

• Adding a page for events
• Adding a component with directions for purchasing tickets
• Refactor to updated tech stack
• Refine SEO features
• Update design

Links

• Baltimore Corgis Website
• Baltimore Corgis Facebook
• Baltimore Corgis Instagram

Contact

Email: baltimorecorgis@gmail.com

Email: andrew@andrewdent.dev