what is the simples way(s) (minimizing accidental complexity) to spin up a basic website with a form behind authentication that triggers a serverless function on submission (supplying auth context, so I can be sure in the function about the identity of the user) ?

if you handle the authentication with a local user table then a php file 😄

Maybe you could hack something together with an embedded google form? Or some other form as a service provider

I unironically agree with @Mariano Guerra. As somebody who went straight from managed hosting (cpanel) to aws, now that I've started managing a site by sshing into a box running apache, I've hit far fewer roadblocks, and the ones I've hit have been simpler to sort out. That being said, I recently made a google sheet act as a basic cms for a site. So that could be an option too.

@Tak Tran I’m intrigued by your suggestion! I think you can trigger AWS Lambda or Github Action via Zapier/etc based on entries to Google Forms/Airtable. And presumably you can force people to log-in with their google identity for auth purposes & record that. I wish I thought of that two days ago 😛 Only thing I’m not sure about is how do you enforce “unique per user field” (e.g. username)