Building a Modern, Networking-Focused Online Community Portal

In 2018, an international call for proposals took place on behalf of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, e.V. (FES) who was searching for an agency to partner with as they developed a designated community platform. The challenge was to create a modern, secure, and networking-driven online community for over 22,000 users. The platform would require complex elements and serve a user base consisting of FES employees, lecturers, alumni, scholarship holders, and student funding employees. FES was looking to reinvent the portal using modern means with networking being the central theme for all developments.

FGTCLB GmbH, a network consisting of five agencies in the DACH region, won the tender. Despite being a relatively young agency group at the time, it stood out amongst the competitors with their deep TYPO3 expertise and agile project management approach to design and development. The network of agencies includes eCentral (Marburg), KM2 (Düsseldorf), Pagemachine (Frankfurt), Snowflake (Zurich) and web-vision (Mönchengladbach)—sourcing expertise across agencies, with agile teams assembled for each project.

When the concept for developing a community platform emerged, there were a few key factors that played into the execution. From the beginning, this portal was meant to serve as a networking tool as its primary function and any developments or design needed to reflect this central point. The portal needed to be completely reinvented to meet modern standards and attract a tech savvy audience. The CMS powering this platform would need to be robust enough to handle the complexities, and the open-source nature was a key factor in FES's decision-making process. TYPO3 is a scalable and fast open-source CMS that fully meets the requirements of this concept. FGTCLB is well-versed in managing TYPO3 projects and this was underscored during the tender process. 

FES had an ambitious concept in mind and were solid in their goals from the start—all they needed was a motivated, talented partner to bring the vision to life. FGTCLB needed to source their best-matching talent and execute with full dedication. For this project, they took an agile approach from start to finish which initially consisted of more than 20 scrum sprints to redevelop the structure, user guidance, overhaul the design, and enhance functionality. 

With community as the central focus, a core feature of this portal is the group functionality. The groups are automatically assigned based on their university affiliations or committees. Free common interest groups can also be formed within the FES Social community. FGTCLB prioritized creating virtual workspaces where members can collaborate and exchange ideas or work together. This is accomplished by a user-created topic group, set up via a four-step group wizard. From there, modules provide users with essential information and tools in one central location. This can all be accessed, edited and managed by administrators/members through the frontend editing of the portal. A statistics widget was also implemented for FES to monitor the number of registered users in the community portal. 

In addition to the user groups and forums, the FES portal includes a robust marketplace for services such as job and internship requests, sublet listings, carpooling opportunities, etc. Job exchange, a popular area of the marketplace, was developed modularly to ensure categories can be added at any time without hassle. To encourage quick communication from the marketplace or user groups, FGTCLB utilized RocketChat as the online chat function, enabling real-time communication. This solution was selected due to its user-friendly functionality. 

With the user top of mind, a user-centric dashboard was created with special attention paid to the user alerts for important system messages and notifications. The notifications are curated to the individual user, sorted via importance and displayed in widgets. Users are sure to stay current and informed of upcoming events through their dashboard which is linked to the FES event database. FGTCLB created and implemented their custom TYPO3 dashboard extensions. 

FES operates a range of database applications including Oracle, that are used as in-house data centers to process and support internal employee processes. These databases manage personal data, publications/materials, event records and information pertaining to study grants and scholarships. Throughout the development of the portal, various Oracle interfaces were created which are automated to receive and write user data securely through their own interface application. 

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and data security were top of mind during this installation. All guidelines were adhered to and no personal information or data is stored in the TYPO3 database. 

A TYPO3 extension was developed and used as an OAuth2 provider, enabling external services to be accessed via single sign-on, which ensured a seamless user experience. These different interfaces were created during development in order to retrieve and write user data in a secure manner. This process was done via their own interface application during portal runtime. In line with the principles of open source, this custom TYPO3 extension was made publicly available to the community. One of the major benefits of an open source community is the support and collaboration as demonstrated in this context. 

Throughout the entire development process, the team prioritized accessibility and ensured it met compliance standards—providing an inclusive experience for users.

The partnership between FGTCLB and FES continues today. This project follows a continuous agile development approach, currently in its 130th sprint. The team has iteratively redeveloped the structure, improved user guidance, overhauled the design, and continues to enhance functionality. The FES Social portal supports thousands of scholarship owners and operates efficiently thanks to TYPO3’s robust capabilities for large-scale projects. Today, an activity stream and a mentoring program are under development to keep the portal modern and updated. 

Are you looking to tackle a complex project? TYPO3 is a scalable, reliable and fast CMS suited for projects of varying complexity, size and industry. 

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