Background
The Lone Star Texas Chapter of the American Society of Home Inspectors decided it was time to replace their 10-year old network of web sites. Aside from the basic member content, the original site included an ASP.net member database that was searchable from the front end. Since ASP.net is an outdated technology, the database had to be replaced with an updated tool that would allow Lone Star ASHI’s web master to easily manage its members.
As part of this update, the organization wanted to empower their members to have more control over their own member profile, allow them to interact with other members within a closed social network and contribute to a collective library of resources, documents and videos.
Their web network included 13 web sites, 12 of which included custom loops that pulled a dynamic list of members from the database based on location. For example, if you are on the Houston chapters web site, the members in the Houston area were pulled from the database and presented on the homepage. Every site had to be migrated to WordPress.
On the primary site ashitexas.org, I built a custom plugin to allow users to quickly search the members database for home inspectors in their area by city or zip code. The search results were listed according to an algorithm based on member rank and location.
The new network was comprised of a WordPress multsite containing 13 “child” sites and BuddyPress.
What I Did
- WordPress multisite installation set up
- Installed and configured BuddyPress
- Built member search plugin
- Built a total of 13 WordPress sites within multsite network
- Built and incorporated dynamic member database pull on 12 sites
- Content management
- Trained client on how to use WordPress
