Half Moon Pub: Hildenborough

Half Moon Since 1510, the Half Moon pub in Hildenborough has been the cornerstone of the village I currently live in.

That's why, when thinking about a nice portfolio piece of work I could do, I decided to update their digital presence and make them a website.

Please feel free to check out the website I have made here, and consider giving them a visit next time you are in the area.

Half Moon Website

Lambda function integration

I don't like the overreliance on serverless functions (serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider allocates machine resources on demand) when building something at scale, especially if you don't understand why you're doing it.

However, here is a perfect example of when to use one. This is my local pub's website: https://lnkd.in/eFx4sVSB. I made it for them because someone was domain camping the pub's name and using it to spread malware. This, on the other hand, is just a simple, fast website that displays core information about the menu and opening times. Of course, I designed it as static content to prevent hosting costs for them since I did it pro bono.

When working with local businesses, heed my advice: these are real people you're working with, so build systems they are already familiar with. They have a Facebook page where they announce their events. I could build a CMS system with logins and management pages—I have done so many times. But in this case, a simple AWS Lambda function that queries the Meta endpoint for showing their events means they can keep doing exactly what they do while getting a website that reflects their hard work.

Good code is 50% engineering skills and 50% understanding the problem.

Below is a screenshot of the updated live events that get pulled through with a little data formatting to make sure the date is also provided for things like "x event tomorrow"