Case study · Professional engineering society
Off WordPress and onto a site the board runs itself: events, payments and QR check-in included.
The New York City chapter of the state's professional engineers, moved off an aging WordPress site onto a fast custom platform the board can run itself, from posting an event to scanning tickets at the door.
Before, and after.
01
Off WordPress
The old site was hard to update, slow, and easy to break. We moved the chapter onto a custom platform without losing a page or an address.
02
A CMS the board actually uses
Events, announcements, scholarships, sponsors and board members are edited in Sanity. Changes go live in seconds, and the layout can't be broken.
03
Event management
Every event gets its own page with a write-up, details and photo gallery, and the archive of past events and presentations grows by itself.
04
Register and pay in one flow
Members sign up for PDH seminars and dinners right on the event page and pay through PaymentForm.io into the chapter's own PayPal.
05
QR check-in at the door
Each registration sends a branded QR ticket. Board members scan them from any phone, so the door list is no longer a spreadsheet.
06
A look that matches the profession
A design system built for the chapter, with a live 3D map of New York in the hero. It works on every screen and comes in light and dark.
The brief
The NYC chapter of NYSSPE represents the professional engineers who keep the city standing, and runs a steady calendar of dinners, PDH seminars, scholarships and MATHCOUNTS. Its website was an aging WordPress install: slow, hard for volunteers to update, and held together with plugins and spreadsheets whenever an event needed registrations. The board wanted a site that looked like the profession it represents and that they could run without a developer.
What we built
A custom site with its own design system, opening on a real-time 3D map of New York with the chapter’s work pinned to it. Behind it sits Sanity, set up around how the board works: events, announcements, sponsors and board members each have their own place to edit. Events are the core: every one has its own page, with registration and payment built in, a QR ticket emailed to each attendee, and a gallery once it is over. The old Events menu kept its addresses, so nothing that linked to the old site broke.
What it does for them
- Board members publish an event, an announcement or a new sponsor in minutes, without touching code.
- Members go from reading about a seminar to registered and paid on the same page, with the money landing in the chapter’s PayPal.
- Check-in is a phone and a QR code instead of a printed list.
- The chapter finally has a site that reads as seriously as the license it protects.