consider dropping donate-static and donate-api in favor of a single unified web application

donate.tpo is currently implemented as a static lektor site that communicates with a "middleware" backend (tpo/web/donate) via javascript. this is counter-intuitive; why are the frontend and backend kept so seperate? if we coupled the frontend and the backend a bit more closely, we could drop most of the javascript (including the javascript needed for payment processing), and we could create a system that doesn't need code changes every time we want to update donation perks

with the current approach, the static mirror system serves static html pages built by lektor. these static pages use javascript to make requests to donate-api.tpo, our "middleware" server written in php. the middleware piece then communicates with our civicrm instance; this middleware -> civicrm communication is fragile, and sometimes silently breaks

now consider a flask or django web application. a user visits donate.tpo, and is served a page by the web application server. when the user submits their donation form, it's processed entirely by the flask/django backend as opposed to the frontend javascript validating the forum and submitting it to paypal/stripe. the web application server could even request the currently active donation perks, instead of a developer having to hack around javascript and lektor every time the donation perks change

of course, this would be a big change to donate, and would require a non-trivial time investment for planning and building a web application like this. i figured step 1 would be to create a ticket, and we can go from there as the donate redesign progresses