overview
a photography-studio site built without a framework. the challenge i gave myself was to see how far plain html, css, and javascript could go before the lack of a framework actually hurt.
answer: further than i expected.
what's in it
- homepage — hero, services, testimonials, calls to action.
- gallery (
galeria.html) — image grid with scroll-triggered animations via aos. - contact (
contacto.html) — client-side validated form, server-friendly format. - budget calculator (
presupuesto.html) — the most interesting piece: a custom pricing calculator in vanilla js that turns service selections into a quote. - news section — driven by
fetch()against a localnoticias.json. no backend, but the pattern is the same one a real cms feed would use.
why it matters
it's the project that taught me where frameworks earn their weight. the budget calculator is ~150 lines of javascript that would be a 30-line react component. the gallery is a hand-rolled grid that tailwind would express in a class string. the site works and looks fine — the cost is in maintenance and in how slow adding the next feature feels.
it's also the project i'd hand to a junior who insists they don't need a framework. build something this size in plain js once and the case for react or next.js stops being theoretical.