Case Study · Custom Website with a Database
A home for the stories of Texas high school coaches.
The client. Josh, a former Texas high school coach, records interviews with coaches and the players they shaped, and publishes them on YouTube.
The problem. The interviews lived on a WordPress site as a run of separate posts. The goal was an archive people could explore by school, town and sport, find the exact moment they came for, and send in stories of their own, with the owner running it day to day.
What we built. A custom site with its own database, built over the summer of 2026 and live on the real domain since September 10, 2026.
A video archive you can search
Every interview is searchable and filterable by school, coach, town, sport and kind of story. The videos live on the owner's YouTube channel, and the site syncs from it on a schedule, so posting a video is the whole publishing step.
Transcripts you can click
Each interview has a full transcript beside the player. Click a paragraph and the video jumps there. Chapters and pull quotes sit on top, so a visitor finds the moment they came for.
Ways to explore Texas
A map with a pin for every program, a coaching tree showing who coached whom (every link comes from something said on camera), and a timeline of eras.
Story submissions
Former players and families can share a story or nominate a coach, with file uploads. Submissions land in the site's own database and private file storage, not in someone's inbox.
An admin the owner runs
Coaches, videos, featured slots and the homepage are all edited in a private admin. The owner changes the site without calling anyone.
A clean move off WordPress
The old WordPress site was retired on 2026-09-10. Every old link redirects to its new page, so search results and shared links kept working.
Since launch. We host it, keep it patched (including the October 2026 framework security update), and make changes when the owner asks. Small ones are covered; bigger ones get an estimate first.
Under the hood, for the curious: Next.js and Payload CMS, a Turso database, private Google Cloud Storage for uploads, and Google Cloud Run for hosting.
Need something like this?
A site with its own database and business tools runs $3,000 to $5,000 to build, then $199 a month. We build you a free working demo first and write down an estimate before you pay anything.