Back to Help

How is our software built?

The Tech Guide builds on the work of many people over many years, building tools and platforms that are available for free or at a cost. This is a list of the key projects we rely on.

Developers

First and foremost, we want to acknowledge the work of our developers at Cygnet. They have built all the software that drives the Tech Guide and lets this website work.

Commercial platforms

We use several commercial platforms to run the Tech Guide.

  • Clerk – enables our user accounts, providing an authentication service (verifying your account details when you log in).
  • GitHub – enables our developers to write their code collaboratively, track everyone’s changes and build new versions.
  • Google Tag Manager – Google’s tool to manage web analytics; we load this only if you permit it, as outlined in our privacy policy.
  • Mailchimp – manages your subscription preferences, if you have a Tech Guide account.
  • Pendo – enables us to measure how people use the Tech Guide so we can learn what works and what doesn’t; we load this only if you permit it, as outlined in our privacy policy.
  • Strapi Cloud – cloud hosting for our content-management system, so your browser can ask for particular pages.
  • Vercel – provides the hosting for our custom Tech Guide software.

Open-source tools

We also use a range of open-source tools either within the Tech Guide itself or to help us to make it.

  • Cypress – helps us test that the software behind the Tech Guide is reliable.
  • ESLint – helps our developers find and fix issues with their code.
  • Git – helps our developers manage different versions of their code as they work.
  • Husky – helps our developers by enforcing code-quality checks when they commit code.
  • Next.js – a software framework built on React (see below) that helps our developers build good code quickly.
  • Prettier – helps our developers maintain consistent styling in their code.
  • Paged.js – a lightweight library that lets us create the print issues directly from the website.
  • React – a software framework to build code in separable web components that work together.
  • React-zoom-pan-pinch – a lightweight React package for zooming, panning, and pinching elements.
  • Sass – an extension to standard CSS to help our developers maintain clear, consistent styles.
  • Slugify – helps us create easy-to-read addresses for each product, help page etc.
  • Strapi – the content-management system that holds and organises all the products and reviews in our catalogue.
  • Turbo – helps our developers build the working Tech Guide platform from their source code.
  • TypeScript – the programming language that builds on standard JavaScript, used by our developers.
  • Valibot – helps our developers ensure that their JavaScript code is valid.
  • Vite – helps our developers build their software quickly.
  • Vitest – builds on Vite to help our developers test their software every time it’s built.