CodeCell++ VESIT website (Next.js)

The CodeCell++ VESIT website, rebuilt on Next.js (App Router) from the original Vite + React app. It looks and behaves the same, but every page is now pre-rendered to HTML, which is what lets Google and other search engines read it properly.

Pages: / (home), /team, /syrus (Syrus 7.0 hackathon), /code-of-conduct.

Run it

npm install
cp .env.example .env.local   # then fill in the values
npm run dev                  # http://localhost:3000
npm run build                # static site in ./out

NEXT_PUBLIC_* values are baked in at build time, so rebuild after changing them. (They replace the old VITE_* names: VITE_EMAILJS_SERVICE_ID → NEXT_PUBLIC_EMAILJS_SERVICE_ID, and so on.)

Where things are

Path	What
src/app/	Routes, page metadata, sitemap.js, robots.js, manifest.js, 404 page
src/app/layout.jsx	Site-wide <head>: title template, description, Open Graph/Twitter cards, site-wide structured data
src/views/	The four page screens (these were pages/ in the Vite app)
src/components/	Same components as before
src/lib/site.js	Site name, URL, keywords, address, social links, preview image – edit SEO details here
src/components/Seo/	JSON-LD helper and the plain-text Syrus summary for crawlers
src/components/SplashGate/	The 1-second CodeCell logo splash
public/	Images, fonts, 3D models (served as-is)
deploy/	CloudFront URL-rewrite function for hosting on AWS

SEO – what is set up

• Server-rendered HTML for every page, with a unique <title>, description, canonical URL and Open Graph / Twitter preview image.
• Structured data (JSON-LD): organisation (with the alternate names CodeCell, CodeCell VESIT, CodeCell++), website, Event for Syrus 7.0, FAQPage, breadcrumbs.
• /sitemap.xml, /robots.txt, web manifest, 404 page marked noindex.
• One <h1> per page, real <h2>/<h3> headings, alt text on images, lang="en-IN".

After deploying, do these once (this is what actually gets the site listed):

1. Open Google Search Console, add the property for https://codecell-pp-cmpn.vesit.ves.ac.in, verify it (DNS record, or paste the HTML-tag code into NEXT_PUBLIC_GOOGLE_SITE_VERIFICATION and redeploy).
2. Submit https://codecell-pp-cmpn.vesit.ves.ac.in/sitemap.xml, then use URL inspection → Request indexing for / and /syrus.
3. Do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools (it can import from Search Console).
4. Link to the site from places Google already trusts: the VESIT website, the CodeCell LinkedIn / Instagram / GitHub profiles, Unstop's Syrus page, GDG/IIC pages. Backlinks matter more than anything in this repo for ranking.

Note: ranking #1 for the bare word "CodeCell" can't be promised – other companies and projects use that name. "CodeCell VESIT", "CodeCell++ VESIT" and "Syrus VESIT" are specific enough that the site should lead for them within a few weeks of being indexed.

Deploying (static export on AWS S3 + CloudFront)

next build produces plain files in out/.

1. Upload out/ to a private S3 bucket (aws s3 sync out/ s3://<bucket> --delete).
2. Put a CloudFront distribution in front (origin access control to the bucket, ACM certificate in us-east-1 for the domain).
3. Attach deploy/cloudfront-url-rewrite.js as a viewer request CloudFront Function, so /team serves team.html.
4. Custom error responses: 403 and 404 → /404.html with status 404.
5. Cache: _next/static/* can be cached for a year (files are hashed); *.html should be short-lived (or invalidate /* after each deploy).
6. Point the domain's DNS (CNAME) at the CloudFront domain name.

Notes

• Large images in public/ (event photos, gallery, sponsor logos) are served unoptimised. Compressing the biggest ones (sponsors/FalconX.webp, sponsors/PrakharLogo.jpeg, syrus-characters/*.png) would speed up first load.
• The .glb 3D models in public/spaceship-3d-models are normal files here (no Git LFS), so they deploy anywhere, including Vercel.
• The loading splash uses CodecellLogoRevolving.webp (1 MB) instead of the old 58 MB GIF.