Seminole Scouts Website
SeminoleScouts.org: Building a Modern, Community-Focused Website with Astro and Cloudflare
Earlier this month, I launched SeminoleScouts.org — a fast, modern, and mobile-friendly website designed to support and recruit for the three Scouting America units chartered at Blessed Sacrament Church in Seminole, Florida. As both a Scout leader and a software engineer, this project brought together two important parts of my life: community engagement and web technology.
Purpose and Vision
The goal of seminolescouts.org is to provide a unified home for Pack 431, Troop 431 (Boys), and Troop 431G (Girls) — helping families discover Scouting opportunities and providing clear information about our programs. It needed to be:
- Fast and lightweight, even on mobile networks
- Easy to update by unit leaders
- Search optimized for local recruiting
- Modern in design, while maintaining a warm and community-friendly tone
Technology Stack
To meet these goals, I built the site using:
- Astro – A static site builder that excels at delivering blazing-fast, SEO-friendly pages. It allowed me to focus on content and layout without overloading users with unnecessary JavaScript.
- Bootstrap 5 – For a responsive, consistent UI with clean, accessible components and grid layouts.
- Cloudflare Workers & R2 – The site is deployed via Cloudflare’s edge network, using Workers for dynamic routes and R2 for static asset storage. This keeps latency low across devices and simplifies CDN-level caching.
- Markdown + JSON Data Layer – Events and announcements are stored in version-controlled JSON and Markdown files, making it easy for other leaders to propose updates via pull requests or a Git-based CMS.
Key Features Delivered
- Single Scrollable Homepage: Combines a hero banner, program overviews, and call-to-action buttons for each unit. Optimized for mobile-first viewing.
- Calendar System: Pulls from JSON feeds per unit from an API Service I wrote that collects calendar data from ScoutBook. Also supports a combined “All Events” view. Clicking on events leads to detailed pages with registration links.
- Contact Form Integration: Protected by hCaptcha and routed through Resend’s API, ensuring safe and spam-free communication with our membership coordinators.
- Cloudflare Pages for Serverless Deployment: The site is deployed via Cloudflare Pages, which provides automatic SSL, CDN distribution, and serverless functions. This eliminates the need for port forwarding and simplifies backend functionality like email routing and newsletter integration.
- Branding and Theming: Consistent colors, typography, and logos across all pages, matching our Seminole Scouts identity while remaining welcoming and professional.
Lessons Learned
- Edge-first deployments (via pages) work beautifully for community sites — fast, low-maintenance, and free-tier friendly.
- Astro’s component model is perfect for managing multiple units under one umbrella. Each section has shared layouts but customized content.
- Static files + dynamic routing give the best of both worlds: versioned content with dynamic feel.
What’s Next
I plan to add a few enhancements over the summer:
- Optional integration with Listmonk for newsletter opt-ins
- Web analytics via Plausible for privacy-conscious traffic reporting
If you’re part of a nonprofit or community group looking to modernize your web presence with affordable, scalable tech — I’d love to talk.