The APEX Official Website Beta is Live!

Project Origins

During our Class of 2023 APEX cohort meeting on July 1, 2026, I casually mentioned that it would be cool to make a class “who’s who” directory. Then everything snowballed into a massive “Build an official website” quest. GENG Haoda, from the cohort of 2023, was promptly appointed as our Boss.

The Development Journey

We had absolutely zero experience in web development. I didn’t even know what the f**k a server or a framework actually did in the first place. I spent the first day doomscrolling through Rednote and Zhihu just to figure out what does it mean to build a website.

Haoda (Boss) suggested our English brand be SUSTech-apex. Then we settled on the official name The APEX Honors Class of Basic Sciences, drawing direct inspiration from our official Chinese name, “基础科学攀峰班.” We applied for a domain with the university’s official suffix: apex.science.sustech.edu.cn. Falling under the College of Sciences, it looks incredibly upscale, exclusive, fabulous. Heh.

Our advisor, Ms. ZHANG Yunjuan, entrusted website’s construction entirely to our hands, therefore the content and style should cater to student (GenZ) preferences rather than conforming to the bureaucratic, conventional university templates. Good excuse for me to let loose. The hell with bureaucratic aesthetics and dry conference summaries (lmao).

Jokes as I must, many institutional websites do have elements worth learning from. Start with the Chinese interface of USTC’s School of the Gifted Young (SGY) website: many of its features are textbook examples of what not to do in web design. Massive walls of repetitive text and bloated content (you look and think, “Yep, definitely an official site”). Still, their English interface is well-done: clean, harmoniously color-coded, with key sections visually emphasized while secondary elements elegantly recede into the background. While I’m no expert, I personally dictate the SGY English website to be top-tier nationwide.

The design of the APEX website draws inspiration from the SGY English interface. Built upon the Clarity blog theme framework within Hugo, we did extensive surgery to push it steadily toward a geek&tech vibe. I should tell you that lots of the elements weren’t even intentional; they happened out of mistyped code or poor skills to replicate a specific feature. One accident leads to another, and I ended up with something surprisingly great, so I kept them. (Prof. JO Kyo: Serendipity!)

Never question what a lone ranger noob and his laptop can do. Misdirected server files, site 404, HTML files threw tantrums, whenever I got stuck, go to AI. July 3, our very first internal beta version was fresh out on the table, officially dubbed V0.1.1.20260703. Now that the architecture is built, we are just waiting for our team to flesh out the content.

What do we need from you during this Beta?

July 13th update: the IT dept. completed its security inspection and authorized access outside campus network.

Currently the following tasks are up ahead:

• Fill out the student and faculty profile cards.
• Build personal homepages for students who want them: optimizing a default template and batch-collecting member information.
• Brainstorm: What other frequently asked questions (FAQs) should we add?
• Contribute to our photo stack!
• Après moi, le déluge.