How I Built a Mental Health Website with Django, AWS and Vanilla JavaScript

Asier Larruscain — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 15:54:47 +0000

I'm a psychologist, not a software engineer.

A few years ago, if I wanted to change something on my website, automate a process, or build a new feature, I would have needed to ask a developer.

I decided to take a different approach: learn enough web development to build and maintain the project myself.

The result is Supera tu Ansiedad, a Spanish mental health website focused on anxiety, where I publish evidence-based educational content, practical resources and offer access to online psychological therapy.

Today, the website runs on a stack built around Python, Django, AWS, HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript.

This is what I learned building it.

Why Django?

My first major decision was choosing the backend.

I wanted something that:

could grow with the website
had a mature ecosystem
handled content dynamically
allowed me to automate repetitive tasks
didn't force me to reinvent basic web functionality

Django ended up being a great fit.

One of the things I appreciate most about Django is how much functionality is already structured for you.

Instead of assembling many independent tools, I could progressively learn how models, views, templates, URLs and other parts of the application worked together.

For someone coming from psychology rather than computer science, that structure helped enormously.

Keeping the frontend simple

For the frontend I decided not to use React, Vue or another JavaScript framework.

The website mainly uses:

HTML
CSS
vanilla JavaScript
Django templates

For this particular project, that has been enough.

Most pages are content-heavy psychology resources, so I don't need a large client-side application.

JavaScript is added when interaction is actually useful rather than being the foundation of the website.

This keeps the architecture relatively simple and gives me direct control over what is happening in the browser.

It has also taught me an important lesson:

You don't necessarily need a JavaScript framework to build a useful production website.

The right stack depends on the problem you're trying to solve.

Going serverless with AWS and Zappa

The application is deployed using AWS and Zappa.

Zappa makes it possible to run Django using AWS Lambda, which was an interesting architecture for a relatively small independent project.

My infrastructure also uses AWS services for things such as static files, distribution and automation.

This was probably the steepest part of the learning curve.

Building something locally is one thing.

Understanding deployments, cloud infrastructure, permissions, caching and production errors is another.

But learning those pieces gradually gave me much more control over the project.

Python beyond the website itself

One of the biggest advantages of choosing Python is that I can use it for much more than Django.

As the website grew, I started creating small automations around it.

For example, I use automation to help with:

website maintenance
SEO analysis
detecting potential problems
processing data
repetitive administrative tasks

This is where programming became particularly valuable to me.

Instead of only asking:

"How do I build this page?"

I started asking:

"Why am I doing this manually every week?"

If something follows predictable rules, there is often an opportunity to automate at least part of it.

Building software as a non-developer

The most interesting part of this project has probably been learning software development without trying to become a software engineer.

My goal is still psychology.

Programming is a tool that allows me to build things around my professional work.

That changes the way I approach development.

I don't need to know everything about Python, JavaScript or AWS. I need to understand them well enough to solve the problems my project actually has.

That project-based approach has worked extremely well for me.

Every real problem gives me a reason to learn the next concept.

What I would recommend to other non-developers

If you're learning programming from another profession, my biggest recommendation would be:

Build something you genuinely need.

Don't wait until you feel like you know enough.

Start with a small real project and allow the problems you encounter to determine what you learn next.

My own progression has essentially been:

HTML/CSS → JavaScript → Python → Django → AWS → automation

And I'm still learning.

What started as simply wanting more control over my psychology website has gradually turned into the ability to build, deploy and maintain my own web project.

For me, that's one of the most powerful things about learning to code.