Case study · Community · Platform
True Worshippers Church
A website and admin platform for True Worshippers Church. Members find events, stream and download sermons, send prayer requests and join the community online, while the church’s own team manages everything from a dashboard, without needing a developer.
- Role
- Solo full-stack developer
- Type
- Community · Platform
- Status
- Live and in use
- Stack
- React · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · React Router · React Hook Form · Axios · Node.js · Express · MongoDB · JWT · bcrypt · Cloudinary
- Live
- twcglobal.org ↗
THE PROBLEM
The church needed one place for its life online: services and events, sermons with video, prayer requests, first-time visitors, member registrations, celebrations and a newsletter.
It had to be run day to day by non-technical staff, and sermon videos are large files.
KEY DECISIONS
- 01
Sermon videos go straight to Cloudinary
The risk · Routing large video files through the backend ties up server memory and bandwidth, and risks timeouts and upload size limits.
- Videos upload directly from the admin’s browser to Cloudinary. The backend only saves the resulting video URL, alongside the sermon’s title, speaker and date.
- Uploads are faster for the team, the server stays light, and Cloudinary handles streaming and delivery to members.
- 02
A dashboard the team can run alone
The risk · Different people on the team need different levels of control, and nobody should be able to break the site by accident.
- Role-based access with admin and superadmin roles.
- JWT authentication with bcrypt-hashed passwords and http-only cookies.
- Full create, edit and delete for every content type, with validation and clear error handling at the API layer.
- 03
Events that sort themselves
The risk · Manually moving events from “upcoming” to “past” is exactly the kind of job that gets forgotten.
- Each event’s status (upcoming, ongoing or past) is worked out from its dates, so the site is always correct without anyone touching it.
- 04
Built to be found and used on phones
The risk · Most visitors arrive on mobile, many through search.
- A reusable SEO component gives every page proper titles and descriptions.
- Mobile-first layouts tested on phone, tablet and desktop, lazy-loaded pages, and a responsive admin sidebar.
WHAT THE TEAM MANAGES
- Events and services
- Sermon library with video
- Prayer requests
- First-time visitors
- Member registrations
- Celebrations
- Community
- Newsletter subscribers
OUTCOME
Live at twcglobal.org and actively used by the church.
Members stream and download sermons; the team publishes everything themselves.
Built solo, from database design to deployment.
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