This repository represents my hands-on exploration of Payload CMS as a potential solution for a client rebuild, as well as my personal curiosity about modern headless CMS capabilities. As a tech team lead transitioning back to development roles, I believe in thoroughly understanding technologies before recommending them—and the best way to do that is to build with them.
My client is approaching a website rebuild with specific requirements: they need performance, ease of editing, and custom development capabilities. Coming from WordPress, they're concerned about performance limitations and development complexity as their business requirements grow. After evaluating the headless CMS landscape—including Contentful, Sanity, and WordPress headless—Payload stood out for its open-source nature and developer-friendly architecture.
Their needs include a marketing website with integrated appointment booking and e-commerce capabilities. This project serves as both a technical evaluation and a proof-of-concept.
Rather than build a generic demo, I chose to prototype something I understand from personal experience: a sports league discovery and management platform. Having played men's league hockey and dealt with less-than-ideal scheduling systems firsthand, I know the pain points that need solving.
This prototype explores:
- Complex content structures with intuitive admin experiences
- Rich text editing combined with custom blocks
- Custom business logic implementation
- Scalable data relationships
My process for evaluating new technologies follows several phases:
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Continuous Awareness - I maintain an active mental inventory of emerging technologies through social media, YouTube, newsletters (TL;DR has been particularly valuable), and increasingly, in-person tech events.
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Needs-Based Pairing - When requirements arise, I match known technologies to specific needs or research new options that fit the criteria.
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Community Validation - I read reviews and community feedback to understand real-world experiences.
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Documentation Deep-Dive - I thoroughly review official documentation and demos.
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Hands-On Prototyping - Most importantly, I build. I'm a hands-on person—you can't truly understand a technology until you've wrestled with its quirks and discovered its capabilities through actual development.
This project specifically investigates:
- Custom Logic Implementation - How easily can complex business rules be implemented within Payload's architecture?
- Content Complexity vs. Admin Simplicity - Can we build sophisticated content structures while keeping the editing experience intuitive?
- Rich Content Management - Exploring the balance between Payload's rich text editor and custom blocks for flexible content creation.
- Next.js Integration - Leveraging Payload's embedded Next.js architecture for full-stack development.
Future exploration will include mobile app integration, as both client requirements and personal curiosity drive me toward cross-platform data utilization.
The learning curve has been manageable, though I've encountered some friction around type documentation—having concrete references for built-in types would improve the developer experience. The block system required building a mental model from scratch, making my first implementation somewhat clunky, but I expect future iterations to be much smoother.
Technology evaluation isn't just about features and benchmarks—it's about understanding how tools fit into real-world development workflows and business requirements. This prototype demonstrates my approach to technical decision-making: thorough, hands-on, and always with end-user needs in mind.
I'm a nerd who loves cool tech and solving problems. That curiosity drives me to continuously explore new tools, but always with the practical goal of building better solutions for the teams and clients I work with.
This exploration reflects my commitment to staying current with technology trends and making informed architectural decisions. Whether leading a team or contributing as a developer, I believe in understanding our tools deeply enough to use them effectively.