Polymer

Polymer is the rebuilt web platform for The Polytechnic, RPI's independent student newspaper. This repository combines the public site, editorial CMS, archive-aware search, and deployment tooling in a single Next.js + Payload application.

What This Repo Does

• Serves the public homepage and section pages for news, features, sports, and opinion
• Renders article pages with standard, opinion, and photofeature layouts
• Hosts staff pages and public author profiles
• Provides a Payload admin panel for publishing, media management, and homepage curation
• Searches both the current Payload content store and the legacy Poly archive
• Deploys to a self-hosted production environment with smoke checks and rollback support

Stack

• Next.js 16 with the App Router
• React 19
• TypeScript
• Payload CMS 3
• PostgreSQL
• Tailwind CSS 4
• Playwright
• pnpm

Project Layout

.
|-- app/
|   |-- (frontend)/              # Public-facing routes
|   |-- (payload)/               # Payload admin + API routes
|   `-- api/                     # Search, health, weather, and utility endpoints
|-- collections/                 # Payload collection definitions
|-- components/                  # Shared UI, article layouts, dashboard UI
|-- migrations/                  # SQL / Payload migration assets
|-- public/                      # Static assets, icons, and fonts
|-- scripts/                     # Deploy and local bootstrap scripts
|-- tests/                       # Playwright smoke and search tests
|-- utils/                       # Formatting, routing, rate limiting, search helpers
|-- payload.config.ts            # Payload config and Postgres adapter setup
|-- next.config.ts               # Next.js config wrapped with Payload
`-- .github/workflows/           # CI and production deployment workflows

Core Content Model

• articles: Draft/published stories with section, authors, featured media, subdeck, and rich text content
• layout: The curated homepage configuration, including lead story and pinned slots
• users: Staff accounts, roles, headshots, bios, and position history
• media: Uploaded assets with alt text and photographer attribution
• job-titles: Reusable staff titles for profile timelines

Article write access is role-based. Admins, EICs, and section editors can update articles; writers can create them; anonymous visitors only see published content.

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• pnpm
• PostgreSQL

Install

pnpm install

If .env does not exist, the postinstall script will generate one and create a random PAYLOAD_SECRET.

Required Environment Variables

DATABASE_URL=postgres://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:5432/polymer
PAYLOAD_SECRET=replace-with-a-long-random-string

Optional Environment Variables

LEGACY_DATABASE_URI=postgres://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:5432/legacy_poly
NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL=http://localhost:3000
BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:3000
PLAYWRIGHT_WEB_SERVER=1
PLAYWRIGHT_WEB_SERVER_COMMAND=pnpm dev

LEGACY_DATABASE_URI is required if you want archive-backed search results from the old site. Without it, the current-content site can still run, but the legacy search endpoints will not be fully functional.

Run the App

pnpm dev

Open http://localhost:3000 for the public site and http://localhost:3000/admin for the CMS. On a fresh database, Payload will prompt you to create the first admin user.

Scripts

• pnpm dev: Start the local Next.js + Payload dev server
• pnpm build: Build the production app
• pnpm start: Run the built app
• pnpm lint: Run ESLint
• pnpm typecheck: Run TypeScript without emitting files
• pnpm test:smoke: Run the main Playwright smoke suite
• pnpm test:search-limit: Run the search query bounds test
• pnpm test:deploy-smoke: Run the post-deploy health/smoke script
• pnpm generate:types: Regenerate payload-types.ts

Runtime Notes

• Homepage content is driven by the layout collection rather than a hardcoded editorial order.
• Search combines Payload content with legacy Wagtail-era content through LEGACY_DATABASE_URI.
• The health endpoint is GET /api/health and verifies that the app can reach the primary database.
• The article route format is /:section/:year/:month/:slug.

Testing

The Playwright suite checks that key public routes render without framework errors, uncaught page errors, or broken critical assets. The smoke coverage includes:

• Homepage
• Section pages
• Article pages
• Staff pages
• Search input sanitization behavior

For local smoke runs:

pnpm test:smoke
pnpm test:search-limit

Deployment

Production deploys are triggered by GitHub Actions after the CI workflow succeeds on a push to main.

The deploy workflow:

1. Creates a fresh release directory on the self-hosted server
2. Installs dependencies with pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
3. Links shared runtime assets like .env and media
4. Runs SQL migrations before the app build
5. Builds the app
6. Atomically switches the active release
7. Reloads the polymer PM2 process
8. Verifies /api/health and runs deploy smoke checks
9. Rolls back to the previous release automatically if verification fails

Because main is deployment-sensitive, treat it as a release branch rather than a scratch branch.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.