Cross-Platform Social Networking Platform for Faith Connections
A cross-platform Christianity social networking app helping people share and amplify their faith and connect with like-minded individuals
Industry
Social networking
Team
9 members
Working since
2023
Country
USA
About a Project
Our customer is a US-based Christian missions training organization that aims to help people of faith worldwide find like-minded people and create a community. The client needed an experienced IT partner to develop a ministry management cross-platform product from scratch to make their training and evangelism initiatives more effective and increase user engagement
Goals set to Cleveroad
Create an MVP version of an engaging cross-platform mobile social network for Christians, meeting budget constraints and quality demands
From legacy solution into new Christian ministry management app, ensuring all data related to denominations, outreach, and prayer commitments is preserved with full integrity
Develop a flexible web admin panel for the entire ministry management system administration and control of every denomination’s performance based on admin roles and responsibilities
Solutions we've delivered
Development of a social media app’s MVP version with distinctive functionality such as multi-language support, commitments, denominations, and map integration
Seamless migration of analytical data crucial to tracking commitments, discipleship, and Gospel outreach to the new Christian social network using a structured data migration process to ensure a smooth and secure transition
Creation of a web-based admin panel with Permission-Based Access Control, enabling ministry management system administration across countries, regions, or denominations, tailored to admins' role
Results for the Customer
Custom social networking application allowing Christians worldwide to join denominational groups, find places for praying near them, meet on a map, and set commitments
A smooth transition of critical ministry analytics data on prayer activities, denominational insights, and disciple engagement to a new Christianity platform and ensuring continuity and reliability in data operations
A robust admin panel that enables handling all ministry administration tasks, including denominations set up, disciples and groups management, statistics and locations review and tracking, and map editing
Business Challenges
Our customer is an international missionary organization whose primary purpose is to support religion. To increase the efficiency of the organization’s activities, our client needed to build a social media platform that would help people share their faith with others. The client already had a working solution version, but it did not meet their requirements due to low security and performance. They required to develop a secure Christian social network from scratch, focusing on the same core idea. Therefore, the client needed a reliable technical partner to:
Build engaging social media app’s MVP version within budget. Develop an MVP version of a secure Christianity social network that will help people share their faith with others, considering carefully crafted architecture and ensuring effective control over the speed and quality of the application usage. It was very important to strike a balance in creating a social media platform within a limited budget while still making it engaging to fulfill its core mission.
Set the tone for further development by ensuring quality and scalability. Build a quality, high-performance ministry management application based on a scalable architecture. The scalability capabilities should be sufficient to expand the Christian community, engaging new users worldwide. It was also important to implement multilingual support to increase the client's international presence and make the app comfortable to use for worshippers in any region.
Ensure regulatory compliance in terms of data security and confidentiality. Create a Christian social network in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and modern data security standards. Since the main problem with the first version of the ministry's app was security, it was necessary to implement secure encryption methods to protect the web admin panel and cross-platform mobile apps from cyberattacks and avoid leaks of users' personal data, information from group and 1-to-1 chats, and data about denominations and their members.
Project in Details
Solution Architecture
- System’s core solution is a cross-platform mobile application using Flutter. The app allows end-users belonging to certain denominations to set goals related to the acceptance of Christianism and track their progress. Product also includes Maps integration to find places that are particularly related to their needs and manage them. In addition, the app includes basic social networking functionality, allowing users to communicate in their groups or in 1-to-1 chat and share their own experiences.
- Ministry management system also includes a web-based admin panel for comprehensive system administration, including organization setup, user and group management, and statistics and location tracking. The Admin Dashboard provides valuable insights into overall system performance and the performance of individual denominations, facilitating effective administration and operational oversight.
- Admin panel includes the flexible permission-based access control to regulate features available for each administrator, granting access only to the necessary countries, regions, or denominations. This approach ensures that admins can use only the functions required for their responsibilities. This way, the system reduces confusion, ensures GDPR compliance, and safeguards data access.
Product Essentials
Personal commitments allow users to set up their own plan with a defined end date: how often they are going to pray, how many individuals they are going to train, and how many people they are planning to share their faith with. Users can view different training videos uploaded by Admin to understand how to reach better results in their own path to Christ..
User Dashboard reflects all user’s progress and allows to mark it to stay motivated to reach their goals. Additionally, users can overview Global Totals numbers per commitment, showing the accumulated results for all app users..
Groups enable members of a Christian community to find people with common interests. They can search for existing groups in the system and join them using a special invitation code. Users can also create their own group and generate a unique invitation code to allow others to join it.
Chats allow users to communicate with members of their group and share common interests. In addition, they can communicate with each other using the 1-to-1 chat feature.
Map integration allows users to search for locations related specifically to their needs and experiences. They can also see ratings and reviews about the place they are interested in. This way, they could make an informed decision on whether they should visit the venue or not.
In addition, users can add new locations to the map and edit information about how many people heard the gospel at that venue and how many of them came to Christ and became Disciples. They can also add reviews to existing venues they’ve visited.
The Disciples feature helps users to track their progress in helping people come to Christ. They can create a profile for every church member involved. This profile is not connected to any user account but serves as a means of tracking the progress.
Disciple profile management allows users to select the name and avatar for each Disciple and choose tasks for consistent performance in existing categories to track progress better. They can also add notes or comments about the Disciple's achievements.
User authorization employs One-Time Password (OTP) authentication to meet the requirements for convenience and security. Also, users can pass authorization via Google, Apple ID, or Facebook.
Multi-language support allows for the covering of multiple user groups from different locations and increases user auditory. The app supports more than 6 languages from version 1, and there is a possibility of expanding this number to more languages in the future.
The admin panel, equipped with permission-based access control, empowers each admin only with features needed for their role, ensuring secure management of their assigned denominations. The solution also provides an admin dashboard for controlling and managing every denomination's performance.
Each denomination's administrator can manage users, categories, and groups in the application, including tasks such as locking/unlocking users, customizing student progress categories, and creating or moderating user groups. In addition, admins can control ministry maps by editing or verifying locations, processing training videos, and customizing notifications for specific recipients, ensuring the platform meets the unique needs of their denomination.
Development in Detail
- Our team conducted two phases during the project: Discovery and Development. We collaborated with several stakeholders on the client side, including the COO, CEO, CTO, VP, and Budget Manager. Our delivery team comprised a Flutter developer, web developers, Solution Architect, Business Analyst, Designer, Project Manager, and DevOps. Specialists utilized various means of communication to keep in close touch with our stakeholders. Apart from email correspondence and regular virtual meetings on Google Meet, we created a dedicated Slack channel to address minor or urgent issues. Despite significant time differences, we identified the most convenient time slots for video conferences so that all parties could be involved.
- During the Discovery Phase, we considered our customers' budget restrictions and conducted it in shorter terms than standard, which helped to reduce expenses. The Discovery Phase deliverables included a detailed features breakdown list, business process diagrams, a software architecture document with corresponding diagrams, quality attributes, scenarios, an infrastructure deployment diagram, and a rough estimation document for the development phase.
- During the development phase, we transformed all Discovery deliverables into an MVP version of the Christian social networking app, significantly improving scalability, performance, and security. The ministry management app allows users to set commitments, track progress, and use a map to find meeting places with like-minded individuals. Users can connect through group and private chats. Additionally, we developed a robust web admin panel for managing denominations and users. We also migrated the legacy database from Digital Ocean to AWS Aurora DB, enhancing the app's reliability, performance, and scalability.
Technology stack
The technology stack was selected based on the client’s requirements for product quality and budget
Web Architecture
Frontend
Backend
Mobile Architecture
Cross-platform
3rd-party services
Results Obtained
Budget optimization with MVP development
We’ve managed to meet customer’s budget restrictions during project planning and development. As a result, our client received a scalable MVP version of a social media app for Christians. The newly created application meets the highest security standards, is GDPR compliant, and deals with sensitive information according to the best practices of the industry.
Continuous growth of mobile app users
Our customer received an impactful application that allows them to succeed in their Christian training mission goals. The ministry management app is built in order to increase user engagement with essential social networking features such as 1-to-1 chats and groups. Moreover, the solution enhances trainees’ motivation with commitment progress tracking.
Efficient and secure platform management
The ministry management system includes a robust web admin panel with permission-based access control, allowing the efficient management of each administrator’s capabilities according to their roles and denominations for which they are responsible. The admin panel also allows to track ministry goals by each denomination's performance.
