Development Stacks

Choose a development stack for your Document Portal — Grails/Groovy, Next.js/React, or WordPress.

Table of Contents

A Note On Building Your Custom Portal

You'll read the words "development" and "development stack" a few times in this guide. You'll also see scripts and code snippets. Don't let that scare you.

You can get your customers a great DataPallas Portal without writing a single line of code yourself. You describe what you need to AI — in plain English — and AI hands you the code along with clear instructions on what to do with it. And to say it straight: there will be only a handful of files to touch — not tens, and certainly not hundreds.

That said, if you know how to code, or if you simply enjoy coding — nobody stops you. Write the code yourself, or write part of it and let AI handle the rest. Everything works. You decide how you want to work.

Three development stacks are available for building your Document Portal. Each achieves the same result — a secure, customizable portal for distributing documents to your users. Pick the one that fits your team and preferences.

Build Your Own Portal — It's Easier Than You Think

Building a custom document portal doesn't require months of development. DataPallas's AI Crew walks you through the entire process — from requirements to working code:

  1. Start with Athena — she helps you define requirements, design your data model, and create a complete Product Requirements Document (PRD) with UI mockups.
  2. Pick your stack expert — Hermes for Grails, Apollo for Next.js, or Pythia for WordPress.
  3. Build together — your AI partner generates most of the code from plain English requests, guiding you task by task through the implementation.

The billing portal demos show the full workflow end-to-end: Athena writes the PRD, then Hermes and Apollo each build the complete admin panel and customer-facing portal UI — same requirements, different stacks, same great result.

Grails/Groovy Stack (Recommended)

The Grails stack is the recommended choice for DataPallas Document Portals. Why?

  • Consistency with DataPallas's backend. DataPallas already uses Groovy for scripting (publishing scripts, report processing, automation). Choosing Grails means one language across your entire stack — portal logic and DataPallas integration speak the same tongue.
  • Battle-tested for CMS-like portals. Grails with GORM/Hibernate provides a mature, productive framework for building data-driven admin interfaces and self-service portals — exactly the kind of application a document portal is.
  • JVM ecosystem. Access to the full Java/Groovy ecosystem, Bootstrap 5, AdminLTE, and proven patterns for authentication, access control, and REST APIs.

Your AI partner: Hermes — Grails Guru & Self-Service Portal Advisor. Hermes specializes in building admin panels, customer portals, and document management UIs with Grails — from Athena's PRD to working code, in a pair-programming session.

Next.js/React Stack

For teams who prefer a cutting-edge, modern web stack, Next.js achieves exactly the same portal results — different tools, same outcome.

  • Modern DX. React 19, TypeScript, Next.js 15 with App Router and Server Components, Tailwind CSS v4, shadcn/ui (Radix primitives + Lucide icons), and Drizzle ORM.
  • Full-stack React. Server-rendered pages for fast initial loads, client-side interactivity where it matters, and built-in API routes for seamless backend integration.
  • Payment integration. Native Stripe/PayPal SDK support for invoice portals and billing flows.

Your AI partner: Apollo — Next.js Guru & Modern Web Advisor. Apollo mirrors Hermes's workflow but in the React ecosystem — same PRD, same features, built with React and Tailwind instead of Grails and Bootstrap.

WordPress Stack

The people building DataPallas have a long, loving history with WordPress — and couldn't resist finding it a place here. The Grails and Next.js stacks may fit tighter with DataPallas's architecture, but WordPress has its own great merits: a massive plugin ecosystem, familiar PHP workflows, and thousands of themes and extensions ready to go. For teams who already know and love WordPress, or who prefer PHP, it's a solid choice that delivers great results.

Your AI partner: Pythia — WordPress CMS Portal Advisor. Pythia works exactly like Hermes and Apollo — same mentored pair-development workflow, same task-by-task approach — but with the WordPress stack: PHP 8, Sage theme (Roots), PODS Framework for data modeling, Tailwind CSS, and the full WordPress plugin ecosystem. She doesn't have a documentation page yet, but she's fully operational in the AI Hub.

Note: The Quick Start, Payslips, and Invoices tutorials use the WordPress stack with the Pods framework — as does the setup guide above.

Notifications & AlertsWordPress Portal Setup Guide