DIST2026

The university's site runs on Wix Studio, and that wasn't going to change. So every section you see on dist-unis.com is a hand-coded block living in a Wix iframe, talking to a backend I wrote in Velo, Wix's own code layer. Here's what that cost and what I did about each one.

1. 01

   Every big section had to be an iframe.

   45 hand-coded blocks, about 48,500 lines, each one talking to the page with postMessage. Eight backend modules handle accounts, sessions, scores, votes and stickers.

2. 02

   Wix Studio ignores heights set by code, and nothing scrolls inside an iframe.

   I wrote a headless-browser script that measures every block at four breakpoints, twice: once with Nexa and once with the fallback font, because the fallback sometimes runs taller. The biggest number goes in the editor.

3. 03

   Studio has no real popups.

   The mobile menu is two stacked blocks that collapse and expand. Detail sheets open inside their own block, anchored at the height you clicked.

4. 04

   Students open it on their phones, on campus wifi.

   Photos go through Wix's image CDN, cropped to the exact size they show at. One 26 MB speaker photo ships at about 39 KB. Small assets are inlined so a block is one request.

5. 05

   Wix APIs accept data and quietly drop it.

   The career year vanished from Wix Contacts twice, so it moved into the site's own collections. Every change gets checked on the published site, never on the local file.

On August 7, before building a single page, I cut five from the plan. The line I wrote in the decision log that day: arrive with ten finished pages instead of fifteen half done. Every block also got its file name before it existed, so 45 files never turned into final-v3.

1. 1

   Crear cuenta

   Sign up with your @unis.edu.gt address. The server checks the domain, not the browser.

2. 2

   Arma tu horario

   Filter 33 sessions by day, type and area. Time clashes get blocked before checkout.

3. 3

   Inscríbete

   Wix Events checkout, one free ticket. Three sessions minimum, no cancellations after August 31.

4. 4

   Tu QR

   The ticket lands in Mi DIST as a QR pass you can also save as an image.

5. 5

   En la puerta

   Staff scan the QR. That scan is the attendance record, nothing to rebuild later.

6. 6

   Stickers

   Showing up unlocks stickers on your Mi DIST board. So does exploring the site.

The festival identity existed before the site: six colors, a family of shapes and the Plot Twist sticker. My job was turning it into an interface you can read on a phone, outside, at noon. Click a color to copy it.

The rule I measured before designing anything: text goes black on five of the six colors and white only on blue. The small number on each chip is its contrast ratio.

Nexa · 900 · uppercase

Unpeel the ordinary

Nexa Text · body

Construye tu horario, inscríbete y presenta tu QR en la entrada. Brand lines stay in English, information stays in Spanish.

1. Tuteo, never voseo. A script checked every file for Guatemalan "vos" forms before anything was published, and it tests itself first so it can't pass silently.
2. No number typed by hand. If the copy says 33 sessions or 9 contests, the code counted them.
3. Missing info never says "por confirmar". It read as disorganized. Who and what became Todavía no lo contamos, logistics became Se anuncia pronto.
4. Easter eggs come with no sign. Nothing says "click here for a surprise". You find them or you don't.

Students opened the site between classes, on their phones. Every block has its own mobile layout instead of a squeezed desktop one. The agenda turns into a list by day instead of 29 stacked cards, which took that page from about 8,000 px of scrolling down to 5,800.

Every call that changed the site got its own file in the project, with the date and the reason. These are the ones that shaped it most.

1. Aug 7

   Cut five pages before building one.

   Ten finished pages beat fifteen half done.

2. Aug 9

   Kept Wix's own ticket widget.

   Its tickets and QR codes ran check-in at the door, so I wrapped it in custom blocks and CSS instead of rebuilding it.

3. Aug 9

   The speaker is the hero of every card.

   There were no room numbers and few talk titles yet, so the data decided the design.

4. Aug 19

   The MAD game uses fruit and points, never quetzales.

   With a currency on screen it looked like the game charged money.

5. Aug 19

   Secret sessions hide everything, even their type.

   A card's color gave away whether it was a talk or a workshop, so the color went too. You find out after you register.

6. Aug 31

   "Por confirmar" was banned.

   It made a well-run festival look disorganized. Missing info got two honest phrases instead.

7. Aug 31

   The sponsor marquee moves at a fixed speed, not a fixed duration.

   62 px per second no matter how many logos load, and a new random order every visit so every brand gets seen.

8. Sep 4

   The faculty vote doubled as a data fix.

   Voting asked for your career year, which Wix kept losing. 97 votes later, the data was complete.

9. Sep 21

   Contest deadlines became data with a time zone.

   The page generator refuses to build if a card's date and its countdown disagree.