Trillage is an innovative community network designed to strengthen the ties between local businesses, schools, and supporters, creating a powerful and collaborative donation cycle. By subscribing to Trillage, you not only support your local school but also gain access to exclusive offers from businesses committed to making a positive community impact. The name "Trillage" encapsulates its three fundamental pillars: local businesses, schools/PTA, and community members. Together, these elements weave a stronger and more supportive community network.
Our Work with Trillage
We worked closely with Trillage to build this platform from the ground up, uniting the three essential elements into a single functional ecosystem. Our work included:
- Platform Development: We built from scratch custom dashboards and functionalities for each user type: businesses, schools/PTA, and community members.
- Infrastructure and Database using Google Cloud: We designed and implemented the necessary infrastructure and database to operate the platform efficiently into Google Cloud Platform.
- Stripe Integration: We implemented Stripe to handle subscriptions and donations, configuring various webhooks to keep each user's subscription status updated.
- Sendgrid Integration: We used Sendgrid for customizable email delivery, allowing clients to send specific emails, such as welcome messages post-registration.
Key Features
For our Trillage project, we developed a wide range of features from scratch for its users:
- Sales and promotion website: Allows super administrators to manage content and promote the platform easily using Wordpress self-hosted site.
- Business Registration: Allows businesses to offer deals to the community.
- Donations: Both businesses and community members can make donations to specific schools at any time.
- Subscriptions: Community members can subscribe to support schools and get discounts at local businesses. Subscriptions can be monthly or yearly and can be canceled at any time.
- Fundraising Campaigns: Organized by PTAs, these campaigns help raise funds for specific activities.
- Offer Search: Community members can search for offers by distance and category.
- Notification System: PTA administrators can communicate with members and businesses through notifications.
- Super Admin Management: Manages users, organizations, and businesses.
- Donation Tracking: Both community members and businesses can track the money donated to schools in real-time.
- Specific Campaigns: PTAs can create specific campaigns, allowing students to contribute through subscriptions and get discounts at local businesses.
Implementation Details
We quickly created a sales website to promote the platform as soon as possible. Utilizing a well-known CMS like WordPress, we were able to launch a fully functional marketing tool within 2 weeks. The promotional website offers the ability to fully edit content for all landing pages using Elementor and collect information from the audience using Contact Form 7.
The Donations feature that connects campaigns with fundraisers is facilitated through Stripe, which handles the financial transactions securely and efficiently. We integrated Stripe's Payment Intents API to manage one-time donations and Stripe Subscriptions to handle recurring payments from community members. This setup ensures that all financial transactions are processed smoothly and securely, providing transparency and reliability for both donors and recipients. In addition, a platform "super user" is able to monitor the entire workflow in the custom admin platform dashboard.
For the Notification System, we integrated Sendgrid to manage email communications and templates. This allows PTA administrators to send notifications and updates to members and businesses directly from the platform. Sendgrid's robust API enables customizable email templates, ensuring that communication remains personal and relevant. For example, after a new member registers, an automated welcome email is sent, which can be easily customized by the Super Admin user through Sendgrid's interface.
The Super Admin Management module was developed using Craftable and Laravel. This powerful combination allows super administrators to oversee and manage the entire platform. Through this module, super admins can view and manage all users, content, transactions, and reports. This comprehensive management system ensures that the platform operates smoothly and efficiently, with all activities being closely monitored. Super admins can access detailed reports and analytics to track the performance and engagement on the platform, enabling them to make informed decisions and maintain the platform's integrity.
Another notable feature is the ability for PTA administrators to create fundraising campaigns. This allows PTAs to launch targeted donation drives for specific purposes, such as school events or new equipment. The campaigns can be customized with specific goals and timeframes, and donors can contribute directly through the platform. This feature leverages the power of community support to meet the specific needs of schools efficiently. We created a custom component for Next.js to handle the entire campaigns workflow integrated with Laravel backend API.
Local businesses can also create discount coupons for the community. This functionality enables businesses to offer exclusive deals and discounts to community members who support local schools through donations or subscriptions. The coupon system is seamlessly integrated into the platform, allowing businesses to set up and manage their offers easily. This not only incentivizes community members to participate in the donation cycle but also drives business to local enterprises, creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem. We created a custom component for Next.js to handle the entire coupon workflow integrated with Laravel backend API.
The entire project was developed using MVP approach (minimum viable product) where the goal was to have the platform running with the most important features in the shortest time possible. This allowed us to complete the project from the initial phase (Discovery) to its release into production in just over 4 months, continuing thereafter with the addition of more functionalities and improvements.
Technologies Used
To develop Trillage, we used a variety of advanced technologies and tools:
- Sales Website: Wordpress + Elementor + TailwindCSS
- App Frontend: Next.js 14 + TailwindCSS.
- Additional tech and dependencies: TypeScript, Sass (CSS), FullCalendar (react), ApexCharts.js (react), Google Maps (react), React v18, Axios.
- App Backend: Laravel 10 + Craftable
- Additional tech and dependencies: PHP 8.2, Lodash (JavaScript), Nginx, Docker (development environment), Portainer (staging environment).
- Database: PostgreSQL + PostGIS
- Other Tools:
- Automated Testing: Codeception (Backend) and CodeceptionJS (Frontend) implemented using Husky and Gitlab Pipelines.
- Stripe: Utilized Stripe Subscriptions, Payment Intents, and Customer Portal.
- Terraform: For infrastructure setup and maintenance.
- Serverless Google Cloud:
- GCP with Cloud Run (Serverless)
- GCP Secret Manager: For storing sensitive variables.
- GCP Artifact Registry: For uploading new versions of the application and using with Cloud Run.
- Autoscaling in Cloud Run Instances: For allowing scale from 1 to 5 times resources and handle growing traffic
- GCP SQL with PostgreSQL
- GCP Buckets: For storage and sharing images between API instances.
- Redis: Used with Laravel Cache.
- API Documentation: Using Swagger.
- GitLab CI/CD: For validating code and running tests before each deployment via Gitlab Pipelines.
- Sendgrid: For email delivery and customizable templates.
Impact
Trillage represents an innovative and effective platform for uniting communities through donations and mutual support. Our team has worked diligently to develop a robust and scalable solution that facilitates collaboration between local businesses, schools, and community members. With a solid infrastructure and a comprehensive set of features, Trillage is positioned to have a positive and lasting impact on the communities it serves.
