Testimonials System

Flow

1. Visitor submits a testimonial via the embedded form on truthaboutmonasticacademy.com
2. The submission lands in Airtable with Status = Needs Review (the field default)
3. You approve or reject it by changing the row's Status to Publish or Rejected
4. A GitHub Action runs every 15 minutes and publishes everything where Status = Publish
5. GitHub Pages auto-deploys; the change is live within seconds of the commit

How to review submissions

Open the Testimonials table in the Community base and change a row's Status to Publish or Rejected.

Pieces

Airtable

• Base: Community (app3KoZGg1uwP1RZn)
• Table: Testimonials (tblPhcAnbKSGrDgwn)
• Fields:
  • Name — public attribution shown under the testimonial (e.g. "Rhia"). Blank → renders as "Anonymous".
  • Testimonial — the body text
  • Status — Needs Review (default) / Publish / Rejected
  • Related Community Member — internal-only link to a person; not rendered on the site

Airtable automation

Match submitter to community member — on new row, look up the submitted email against the Community Members table and populate Related Community Member if found.

GitHub

• Repo: monasticacademy/letterstomonasticacademy
• Site: index.html (testimonials homepage — the sync target), submit.html (the submission form) (plain static HTML, served by GitHub Pages)
• Sync script: scripts/sync-testimonials.py
• Tests: tests/test_sync_testimonials.py
• Workflows:
  • sync-testimonials.yml — cron every 15 min, plus a manual "Run workflow" button
  • test.yml — runs on PRs and pushes; shows red/green status checks (advisory, doesn't block)

When a testimonial doesn't show up

1. Confirm its Status is Publish (not Needs Review or Rejected)
2. Wait up to 15 minutes for the next scheduled sync — or force it now: GitHub → Actions → "Sync testimonials from Airtable" → "Run workflow"
3. If still missing, check the latest workflow run under Actions for errors

Safety nets

• Sync refuses to overwrite the testimonials page if Airtable returns zero Publish rows (guards against misconfig)
• HTML-validity tests run inside the sync workflow before the commit step; bad content → no commit, workflow fails
• The same tests run on every PR and push to main, so style or marker regressions are visible

Making changes

Goal	How
Edit a testimonial	Edit the row in Airtable; next sync (≤15 min) updates the site
Reject something already published	Change Status to Rejected; next sync removes it
Reorder	Currently sorted by Airtable's createdTime (newest first). Reordering would need an Order field + a small script tweak
Change the site design	Edit index.html / submit.html, push (or PR). The Tests check will appear on the PR
Force an immediate sync	GitHub → Actions → "Sync testimonials from Airtable" → "Run workflow"