The Forest Economic Partnership (FEP), in association with the Forest of Dean District Council, commissioned us to design and build a bespoke member management system to support local businesses in sharing reusable goods and collaborative projects aimed at improving community sustainability.
We developed a fully functional, feature-rich membership portal that enables local businesses to register, manage their listings and projects, communicate securely with other members, and automatically expire outdated content — all through a custom-built WordPress system.
The platform includes a wide range of custom-developed features, such as:
- Dynamic display of projects and marketplace listings with detailed descriptions, image galleries, and integrated messaging.
- Advanced search and filtering by category and location.
- Instant, site-wide search functionality.
- Membership approval workflow and admin member management tools.
- Automated system notification emails and reminders.
- Custom login and registration pages.
- Intuitive member dashboard for managing listings and projects.
- Automatic expiry of listings and projects after defined dates.
- Encrypted member-to-member messaging with reply threading.
- Email alerts for new messages and expired listings.
- Administrative reporting, including statistics for total listings and projects for annual review.
This system has provided the Forest Economic Partnership with a powerful digital platform to help local businesses connect, collaborate, and promote sustainability across the Forest of Dean.