aka. Seshpenguin
title: Hello, React! author: Seshan Ravikumar type: post date: 2019-07-17T19:37:41+00:00 url: /2019/07/17/hello-react/ classic-editor-remember:
As many of you know, I’ll never be able to leave my website alone for very long… after all, I wanted it to be a representation of me, and so it has to evolve with what I think is cool!
Before we go any further: Don’t worry, the current “xyzwp” website will stay as the default. I don’t want to regress any website features!
With that out of the way… It’s a new website! And it’s built in React! ?
I’ve recently been really impressed by React (and generally JS in 2019, blog post about that coming soon). So, I decided to try and create an alternative frontend for Seshan.XYZ using React & React Router.
One of the coolest parts is the new React-based site still has all the content from the regular website. Basically I am pulling in content from WordPress using their JSON REST API (which, if you ever wanted to pull data from my website for some reason, is available here). This is actually a pretty cool use of WordPress, as a so called “headless” CMS.
Anyway, feel free to explore the React site! As of right now it still lacks some features, like the comments box, for example. It’s also worth mentioning you’ll need a pretty modern browser to use it.
Speaking of modern browsers, one of the goals for the current “xyzwp” website is that it should be at least be usable with really old browsers. The oldest browser I’ve tested is IE6. As expected, CSS doesn’t work at all, but at least links still work, and you can actually find and read blog posts.
I’ve noticed recently that the website is forced to use HTTPS when using the “seshan.xyz” domain (the .onion domain is fine). In order to keep old browser support going, you can use http://seshan.xyz to access the website without HTTPS. This works out nicely actually, since most people who visit using the regular domain probably want HTTPS by default.
Anyway, that’s it for now!