Developer Case Study
Arctic Research Foundation, or ARF, is a private, non-profit organization creating a new kind of scientific infrastructure for the Canadian Arctic, through our operation of efficient, cutting-edge research vessels and self-powered mobile labs.
I worked on the backend portion of this site during my time with Lift Interactive.
This is another fantastic headless website using Wagtail CMS, Django, Python and Django Rest Framework on the backend, with Vue.js as the frontend framework.
Unique Challenges
Like all headless websites, this became about twice the amount of work we originally estimated. Turns out that's very common for any headless website. Decoupling the frontend with the backend is not an easy task and definitely requires more developer time.
The design was somewhat fluid as well. Designed and developed at Lift Interactive, the client wanted additional changes after being approved. Usually an agency doesn't like this, but personally I welcomed the changes because the client had great design ideas. But that did cause some original work to be overwritten by newer work.
Ultimately it just came down to time and deadline. Headless sites always take more time, this was no different.
Don't take the above as a complaint, though! I loved working on this site as it forced me to become more familiar with Django Rest Framework. And the final website turned out amazing!
I'm really glad they reached out to us to work with them and I was chosen to work on this website with them!