Racing WA - Headless Website with Next.js and Progress Sitefinity
Overview
Racing WA is the official digital platform for Western Australia’s racing industry, bringing together thoroughbred, harness, and greyhound racing under one unified experience. The website delivers dynamic content and real-time updates for racing fans, industry professionals, and stakeholders.
My Role
I became part of the team that developed this site as a developer, collaborating with other developers, designers, head of technology, project manager and other specialists at The Brand Agency (an Ogilvy company). We delivered a modern headless architecture using Next.js and Progress Sitefinity.
My contributions spanned both front-end and backend development, including:
- Architecting the Next.js project
- Converting Figma designs into functional components
- Integrating content delivery through Sitefinity’s headless APIs
- Configuring and structuring content types in Sitefinity CMS to support dynamic, reusable content
- Collaborating with designers and content editors to ensure a seamless authoring experience
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To deliver the required Next.js-powered presentation layer, out team implemented a Headless Next.js architecture, with a de-coupled hosting solution on Sitefinity Cloud and Vercel. This leverages the power and flexibility of Next.js, seamlessly integrating with Racing WA’s existing technology stack.
This is the world’s first website built on this cutting-edge technology. The site boasts numerous innovative features, including a bi-directional integration with Racing WA’s data platform for enhanced search functionality and content tagging.
The customer success story about this site is mentioned on the Progress Sitefinity site as well. As an early adopters of Progress Sitefinity, our team received a T-shirt as a gift, and I got one too.
Tech Stack
- Frontend: Next.js, TypeScript, ChakraUI
- Backend: Progress Sitefinity (Headless)
- Tools & Others: Vercel, Azure