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    Web Accelerator

    A golden-path starter kit for websites: framework choices, shared components, deployment and docs baked into a template that teams provision themselves.

    Growingtended planted 1 min read
    On this page

    A web accelerator is a boilerplate with the organisation’s decisions already made: framework, standards, components, deployment. It’s offered through self-service, so every new site starts on the paved road instead of a blank page.

    What goes in it

    • Decisions, not just code. The chosen framework and versions (Next.js or Gatsby, React or Preact), with the reasoning written down so people know when the default fits.
    • The component library, wired in and documented in Storybook, so every site shares one design language.
    • Deployment and edge, already configured. CDN or front door, environments and pipelines.
    • Self-service provisioning. A portal or CLI creates the project, so nobody waits on a ticket.
    • Documentation as product. How to use it, why it’s built this way, and how to step off the path when you must.

    Why it works

    It’s a golden path for websites: the easy way and the standard way are the same way. Standards stop being a document people forget and become defaults they get for free. And it makes consolidation possible later, because the sites already share structure.

    Trade-offs

    • Template drift. A boilerplate that’s copied and then diverges becomes 80 slightly different forks. Keep the shared parts in versioned packages (components, config), not only in the template.
    • Rigidity. Make it too strict and teams route around it. Leave documented escape hatches.

    In practice

    I built one at Elanco, on my industrial placement, and connected it to the company’s self-service portal. Together with shared Storybook components, it let us bring 80 sites onto common foundations and then consolidate them into three (Building a Web Platform for 80 Sites). Today I’d call it a small Internal Developer Platform.

    • #golden-paths
    • #boilerplate
    • #self-service
    • #platform-engineering
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    • Building a Web Platform for 80 SitesGrowing
      …heavy sites. Turned the standards into a starting point. A standards document is easy to ignore, so I built a Web Accelerator: a boilerplate with those decisions already made. Made it self-service. I integrated the accel…
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      The first golden path I built was a Web Accelerator at Elanco: web standards baked into a boilerplate, provisioned through the company's self-service portal, with shared Storybook components, across a web estate of 80 si…
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      …h they can build, test and run the main services. That's a golden path for devices. It's the same idea as the Web Accelerator I built at Elanco for new web projects: put the decisions in the starting point, not in a docu…
    • Internal Developer PlatformGrowing
      Looking further back, the self-service portal, Web Accelerator and shared components I built at Elanco were a small IDP for websites before I knew the term (Building a Web Platform for 80 Sites).

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