Scenario
You produced a beautiful resource and now you want the world to know about it. Because the resource is such a wonderful output of your research, you want to present it in the best way possible. You are convinced that this can only be achieved by a fancy bespoke web application with bells and whistles.
The project member or student assistant who implemented the web application is gone, the moment the funding runs out and the next week your app goes belly up.
Solution
If you find yourself telling a student assistant to set up a MySQL database and to hack a PHP interface together, stop and rethink your life choices!
The best option is always to preserve and publish the data as a well documented dataset in a repository. If providing a dataset-specific presentation can’t be avoided, keep longevity and sustainability in mind, when setting up your solution. The dataset should always remain usable and understandable without a specific presentation layer.
This allows you to gracefully downgrade the presentation when the dataset-specific presentation can no longer be maintained.