Nonprofit Community Portal Optimization

Technology Stack

Laravel
Vue.js
Campaign Monitor
MySQL
SSH

The Client

A nonprofit organization owns this community web portal. The portal contains short films, articles, stories, and news that give insights into different enlisted NGOs and their work for society. People can visit this platform to see the activities of various enlisted NGOs and share their content on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc., from this platform itself. This way, the website visitors can put out the work done by various NGOs and bring everyone’s attention to different social causes the enlisted NGOs support.

The Challenge

Although this community platform was live, it had multiple inefficient and non-functioning modules. For example, some of its content-sharing buttons weren’t working. As a result, users couldn’t share content on specific social media platforms even if they wanted to. The worst was the content scheduling buttons used to be faulty, publishing posts in real-time by mistake instead of at a later date scheduled by users.

Aside from the above issues, whenever users chose to view short films or charity posts for a specific year, the pages went blank. The portal’s reporting capabilities also needed fixes as it wasn’t user-friendly or downloadable.

The platform required enhancements around its admin panel, too. Moreover, the backend was static, which needed to be made dynamic. The portal also required more modules like awards, groups, and image carousels.

In short, the platform required extensive improvements around its backend and frontend structures. It needed removing multiple bugs as they made the platform snail-paced.

Realizing all these problems, the nonprofit organization contacted Capital Numbers to implement solutions that could fix everything and make the website more functional.

The Solution

Capital Numbers started the project by assessing the existing techs and code. We then began working on the backend architecture.

Our Laravel experts modified the backend code to remove errors like blank pages. We fixed the content-sharing buttons, rectified the post-scheduling options, and made the backend dynamic by adding custom code.

We configured Laravel’s pre-built templates to add new modules, such as custom reports, awards, and groups. Because Laravel is compatible with third-party integrations, we could embed charity commission APIs to draw and reflect third-party charity data.

We worked on the Vue.js frontend part to add elements like image sliders and Google and Facebook widgets. Our Vue developers also tweaked a little around the preinstalled news and article sections and used CSS and JS code to eliminate existing UI concerns the client was facing.

Other additions included the integration of Campaign Monitor and Google Maps. We added Campaign Monitor to help the client create hyper-personalized promotional emails for interested website visitors. We also embedded Google Maps to help visitors zoom in and locate different NGOs and the areas they serve.

Our frontend and backend teams followed a CI/CD pipeline to deploy all of the above. As for the frontend deployments, our team used SSH protocol to securely deploy all CSS and JS files on the AWS live server. Regarding the backend deployments, our team used SSH to deploy the MySQL DB and specific package migrations only. We got the rest of the backend elements automatically triggered on the live server as the backend had auto-deploy enabled.

Results

Because of the above skillful implementations, the resulting outcome was a well-optimized community portal as was envisioned by the client. We met goals on time, leading to a successful 3-year-long partnership with the client.

Our team did exceedingly well in delivering the following with utmost efficiency:

Sprint-based Work Delivered on Time

Because we divided work into four to five sprints every year and methodically delivered each, we could ensure the timely completion of every sprint, leading to ultimate client satisfaction.

Post Scheduling Fixed

Because of our code fixes, post-scheduling buttons now work fine, allowing users to schedule posts at a later date and time.

Content Sharing Enabled

Our modifications have made social share buttons functional, encouraging users to share posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Blank Pages Removed

Our backend configurations have removed all blank pages, loading relevant content for relevant pages only.

Reporting Capabilities Enhanced

We made reports customizable and downloadable, allowing the client to extract the developments around his visitor engagement in detail.

Video Uploads Made Easy

We made video uploads easier with Vimeo, which now helps the client upload as many charity videos as he wants.

Image Sliders Incorporated

We added image sliders at the bottom of the pages, attracting more visitors than before.

‘Award’ Section Added

We incorporated the ‘Awards’ module that lists the most acclaimed and awarded charity projects in a single interface.

‘Custom Groups’ Added

We added the ‘Groups’ module that classifies the best charity films year-wise, a module that was missing earlier.

‘Related Posts’ Updated

We included related content at the bottom of the pages, allowing visitors to find similar posts without leaving the page.

Product Release Accelerated

Our core technical knowledge helped us accelerate all these deployments without impacting the timelines.

The Client’s Trust Earned

We are proud of our Vue and Laravel experts, whose proactive solutions and ability to price each sprint correctly bore fruit for our client and us.

Community Portal Made 90% More Functional

Seeing the website 90% more functional than before, the client spoke highly of us and acknowledged our capacity to recommend solutions that bring in long and short-term gains.