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Matthew Daly
Matthew Daly

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Unconventional backends and data sources

I've been a web dev for seven years now, and most of the sites I've worked on have used a database, API or a text format like Markdown as the primary source of content.

However, there's been a few more unusual ones down the years. I once inherited a Tumblr blog for a client that pulled the navigation data from Google Sheets, and once built a static site generator to build a site from two CSV files of equipment listings.

Do you have a story like this? What unusual data sources or backends have you used or inherited?

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Phil Ashby • Edited

I once 'adapted' bugzilla into a content management system for a website, the big idea was that process was important, content was just files...it kind of worked! Output still available of course :)

web.archive.org/web/20040201213654...

edited to add: final delivery was via Velocity templating engine and tomcat..