Jersey Christian Portal — a community platform in four days
- Jersey Christian Portal — built pro bono
- Community web platform with church-admin roles, events, noticeboards and a business directory
- Next.js, React, TypeScript, Firebase, Vercel, Vercel Blob, SendGrid
The challenge
Jersey's churches each had their own way of telling people what was on: a paper noticeboard, a newsletter, a Facebook page someone's cousin ran. Nothing joined them up, and anything island-wide would have to be maintained by people with no webmaster and no budget. It needed to be free to use, simple enough that a churchwarden could post an event unaided, and safe enough to open to the public without inviting spam.
What we built
A platform where every church runs its own corner. Church administrators apply, get approved by a site admin, and from then on edit their church's details and photos, post events to the island-wide What's On, and run their own noticeboard — all without going through me. Alongside it sits a business directory with rotating featured listings, and a community requests board for islanders asking for help or offering it. Sign-ups are email-verified before anyone can post, images upload straight to blob storage, and every transactional email — welcome, verification, moderation alerts — goes out branded and warm rather than looking like a password reset. An admin dashboard handles reports, flags and church claims.
The result
Live on its own domain in about four days from the first conversation, and run day to day by the churches themselves rather than by me. It was built pro bono, which makes it the clearest illustration of how the studio works: no discovery theatre, no project managers, an idea in a conversation and a finished platform on a real domain the same week.
Want something like this?
Tell me about your project and I'll send a fixed quote.