Global Business Excellence Awards 2026

Official website and admin CMS for the Global Business Excellence Awards 2026.
Organised by London Business Consultancy, London, UK.

🌐 gbeaward.com · 🖼️ media.gbeaward.com

🏆 About the Project

This repository powers the public marketing website and protected content-management system for the Global Business Excellence Awards 2026. The platform presents the awards brand, nominee profiles, previous winners, editorial winner stories, contact pathways, SEO metadata, analytics, and a secure admin surface for managing awards content.

The site is built as a production Astro application, not a static brochure. Public nominee and previous-winner content is backed by Postgres, winner media is delivered from Cloudflare R2, and protected admin/auth routes are excluded from indexing.

✨ What It Includes

🏠 Public marketing pages for the awards programme
🏅 DB-backed nominee and previous-winner directories
📰 Canonical winner-story pages with editorial SEO fields
🔐 Protected admin CMS at /gbe-admin-safe
🗃️ Neon Postgres schema managed with Drizzle ORM
🖼️ Cloudflare R2 uploads and media CDN delivery
🔎 Canonical URLs, Open Graph, Twitter cards, sitemap, and JSON-LD
📊 Google Analytics on public pages only
🚫 noindex and no-store protections for admin/auth surfaces
🎨 Dark/light themed GBE visual system with self-hosted brand assets

🧭 Public Website

Core public routes:

Route	Purpose
`/`	Awards homepage and primary brand story
`/about`	Programme overview, purpose, and judging journey
`/nominees`	Published nominees from the database
`/previous-winners`	Published previous-winner directory
`/previous-winners/[slug]`	Canonical winner-story article pages
`/contact`	Enquiry and application contact page
`/privacy-policy`	Privacy policy
`/sitemap.xml`	Generated public sitemap

🛠️ Admin CMS

The admin area lives behind Better Auth and is intentionally hidden from search engines.

Route	Purpose
`/gbe-admin-safe/`	Admin login
`/gbe-admin-safe/overview`	Admin dashboard
`/gbe-admin-safe/winners`	Previous-winner and story management
`/gbe-admin-safe/nominations`	Nomination management
`/api/gbe-admin-safe/*`	Protected admin API endpoints
`/api/auth/*`	Better Auth endpoints

Admin UI rules:

Use in-app dialogs, modals, and toasts for confirmations.
Do not use browser alert, confirm, or prompt.
Keep admin/auth routes noindex, nofollow, noarchive, and nosnippet.
Keep admin responses Cache-Control: no-store.

⚙️ Tech Stack

Area	Technology
Framework	Astro 6 with `output: "server"`
Islands	React 19
Styling	Tailwind CSS v4 via `@tailwindcss/vite`
UI Motion	Motion
Carousels	Swiper 12
Database	Neon Postgres
ORM	Drizzle ORM
Auth	Better Auth
Media	Cloudflare R2 through AWS S3 SDK
Rich Text	TipTap
Validation	Zod
Deployment Adapter	`@astrojs/vercel`
Runtime	Node.js `>=22.12.0`

📁 Project Structure

src/
  components/              Shared Astro, React, admin, SEO, and layout components
  components/admin/        Protected CMS interface components
  data/home.ts             Brand assets, nav items, homepage copy, shared SEO copy
  lib/admin/               Admin auth, content actions, and R2 upload helpers
  lib/db/                  Drizzle client and database schema
  lib/winners/             Winner story content, SEO, query, image, and slug logic
  pages/                   Public pages, admin pages, API routes, and sitemap
  styles/global.css        Tailwind v4 theme, utilities, animations, and overrides

public/
  assets/brand/            Logo, icons, trophy, favicon, and brand media
  assets/journey/          Homepage journey visuals
  assets/nominees/         Local nominee media assets
  robots.txt
  site.webmanifest

scripts/
  import-live-winners.ts   Imports real winners from the legacy WordPress source
  migrate-images-to-r2.ts  Moves existing image URLs into R2
  seed-admin.ts            Creates the controlled first admin account

🗄️ Database Content Model

Primary tables:

past_winners
winner_slug_aliases
nominations
Better Auth tables: user, session, account, verification

Winner-story content lives in past_winners, including headline, standfirst, rich-text body, source notes, SEO title, SEO description, social image, hero image, indexing status, and canonical slug. Old slugs are preserved in winner_slug_aliases so changed story URLs can redirect cleanly.

📰 Winner Story Rules

Winner stories are editorial records, not generated JSON files committed to the repository.

Store article content in the database/admin workflow.
Keep imageUrl as the card/profile image.
Use heroImageUrl only for a separate wide story banner.
Preserve slug aliases when canonical slugs change.
Use indexingStatus=index only for quality-approved, source-backed stories.
Keep weak-source, identity-risk, or wrong-image-risk stories as noindex.
Do not invent quotes, judge comments, audience numbers, rankings, or unsupported claims.
Do not use winner market values in story URLs, filters, labels, article copy, metadata, schema, or keyword strategy.
Do not commit generated content/winner-stories/ or content/winner-research/ exports.

🖼️ Media and Assets

Brand assets are stored under public/assets/brand/ and referenced through assetPaths in src/data/home.ts.

Uploaded/admin-managed media is stored in Cloudflare R2 and served from R2_PUBLIC_BASE_URL, currently intended for https://media.gbeaward.com.

R2-backed uploads are handled by:

src/lib/admin/r2.ts
src/pages/api/gbe-admin-safe/upload.ts

🔎 SEO and Analytics

SEO infrastructure is centralized across:

src/components/SeoHead.astro
src/lib/seo.ts
src/lib/site.ts
src/lib/winners/seo.ts
src/pages/sitemap.xml.ts
src/middleware.ts

Implemented SEO features:

Canonical URLs
Meta descriptions
Open Graph tags
Twitter card tags
JSON-LD structured data
Generated sitemap
Image sitemap entries for winner stories
Public-only Google Analytics
Protected-route X-Robots-Tag headers

🎨 Design System

The visual system lives in src/styles/global.css.

Use the existing utilities:

container-gbe for page width
gold-text for gold-gradient headings
gold-fill for gold-gradient filled elements
btn-gold and btn-gold-hover for primary CTAs

Important styling conventions:

Tailwind v4 config is CSS-based through @theme; do not add tailwind.config.js.
Shared colours use gbe- tokens.
Swiper overrides must stay outside Tailwind layers so they beat bundled Swiper CSS.
Body copy should stay at normal readable weights; avoid heavy 700+ body text.
Keep dark and light themes intentional, accessible, and brand-consistent.

🚀 Getting Started

1. Install dependencies

npm install

2. Create environment file

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in real values.

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@host/database?sslmode=require&channel_binding=require"
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET="replace-with-a-strong-random-secret"
BETTER_AUTH_URL="http://127.0.0.1:4321"
ADMIN_EMAIL="admin@gbeaward.com"
ADMIN_PASSWORD="replace-before-production"
PUBLIC_SITE_URL="http://127.0.0.1:4321"
R2_BUCKET="gbeaward-web"
R2_ENDPOINT="https://your-account-id.r2.cloudflarestorage.com"
R2_ACCESS_KEY_ID="replace-with-r2-access-key"
R2_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="replace-with-r2-secret-key"
R2_PUBLIC_BASE_URL="https://media.gbeaward.com"
PUBLIC_GOOGLE_TAG_ID="GT-W6V9ZG59"
ALLOW_ADMIN_SIGNUP="false"

3. Run locally

npm run dev

Astro starts on http://localhost:4321 unless that port is already in use.

4. Create the first admin user

npm run seed:admin

This script temporarily enables admin signup for the controlled seed flow. Keep ALLOW_ADMIN_SIGNUP=false outside setup.

🧪 Commands

Command	Purpose
`npm run dev`	Start local Astro development server
`npm run build`	Build the production server output
`npm run test`	Run Vitest tests
`npm run test:winners`	Run winner-specific tests
`npm run test:e2e`	Run Playwright winner route tests
`npm run seed:admin`	Create/check the first admin account
`npm run import:winners`	Import real previous winners from the legacy live site
`npm run r2:migrate-images`	Move winner/nomination images into R2
`npm run db:generate`	Generate Drizzle migrations
`npm run db:migrate`	Run Drizzle migrations
`npm run db:studio`	Open Drizzle Studio

npm run preview is not the supported verification path for this project because the Vercel adapter is configured for server output.

🔁 Winner Import Workflow

Real previous winners are imported with:

npm run import:winners

The importer:

Fetches winner records from the legacy WordPress API at gbeaward.com.
Reads winner detail pages to capture the actual award heading.
Uploads remote winner images into the project R2 bucket.
Upserts source identity and media fields into past_winners.
Keeps winner market values cleared.
Does not overwrite human-managed story body, headline, standfirst, canonical slug, SEO story fields, or article body.
Archives missing local winners only when ALLOW_ARCHIVE_MISSING_WINNERS=true.

✅ Verification

Before finishing any code or content-system change:

npm run build

Recommended checks for larger changes:

Public pages render without framework errors.
/previous-winners and /nominees read from the database.
Admin routes redirect unauthenticated users.
Admin/auth responses include X-Robots-Tag.
Public pages include SEO metadata and analytics only where intended.
Winner images resolve from the media CDN.
Sitemap includes public static routes and indexable winner stories.

🚢 Deployment Notes

The Astro config is set for:

Production site: https://gbeaward.com
Server output through @astrojs/vercel
Node.js >=22.12.0

Before production deployment:

Set production DATABASE_URL.
Set production BETTER_AUTH_URL.
Set production PUBLIC_SITE_URL.
Set R2 bucket, endpoint, access key, secret key, and public base URL.
Keep ALLOW_ADMIN_SIGNUP=false.
Run npm run build.
Verify homepage, about, nominees, previous winners, winner story pages, sitemap, robots, contact, and admin login.

🔒 Security and Indexing

Admin pages require a valid Better Auth session.
Admin API endpoints use protected route boundaries.
Admin/auth surfaces receive X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet.
Admin/auth surfaces use Cache-Control: no-store.
Signup is disabled unless ALLOW_ADMIN_SIGNUP=true.
R2 upload configuration is read from environment variables.

🤝 Credits

Global Business Excellence Awards 2026 is organised by London Business Consultancy, London, UK.

Website development credit links to Codezela Technologies.

📌 Maintainer Notes

Treat imported previous winners as real production content.
Keep public nominees and winners database-backed.
Keep homepage brand data in src/data/home.ts.
Keep public SEO through shared helpers instead of page-by-page one-offs.
Do not reintroduce fake winner or nominee seeding.
Do not add the default Astro SVG favicon as the site favicon.
Do not add geography-driven winner-story URL or keyword strategies.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 79 Commits
drizzle		drizzle
output/playwright		output/playwright
public		public
scripts		scripts
src		src
tests		tests
.env.example		.env.example
.gitignore		.gitignore
AGENTS.md		AGENTS.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
astro.config.mjs		astro.config.mjs
drizzle.config.ts		drizzle.config.ts
package-lock.json		package-lock.json
package.json		package.json
playwright.config.ts		playwright.config.ts
tsconfig.json		tsconfig.json
vitest.config.ts		vitest.config.ts

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Global Business Excellence Awards 2026

🏆 About the Project

✨ What It Includes

🧭 Public Website

🛠️ Admin CMS

⚙️ Tech Stack

📁 Project Structure

🗄️ Database Content Model

📰 Winner Story Rules

🖼️ Media and Assets

🔎 SEO and Analytics

🎨 Design System

🚀 Getting Started

1. Install dependencies

2. Create environment file

3. Run locally

4. Create the first admin user

🧪 Commands

🔁 Winner Import Workflow

✅ Verification

🚢 Deployment Notes

🔒 Security and Indexing

🤝 Credits

📌 Maintainer Notes

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Global Business Excellence Awards 2026

🏆 About the Project

✨ What It Includes

🧭 Public Website

🛠️ Admin CMS

⚙️ Tech Stack

📁 Project Structure

🗄️ Database Content Model

📰 Winner Story Rules

🖼️ Media and Assets

🔎 SEO and Analytics

🎨 Design System

🚀 Getting Started

1. Install dependencies

2. Create environment file

3. Run locally

4. Create the first admin user

🧪 Commands

🔁 Winner Import Workflow

✅ Verification

🚢 Deployment Notes

🔒 Security and Indexing

🤝 Credits

📌 Maintainer Notes

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