Project Progress

Why Mailchimp had quietly become your database, and the plan to give each system exactly one job instead.

• Diagnosed the root problem — identity only ever linked by email, no validation on bulk edits
• Proposed clean ownership: Memberful (billing), ChimpLink (applicant history), new members app (live profiles), Mailchimp (read-only)
• Approved, 22 July 2026

Every person now gets one permanent internal ID from their very first contact with GBX — so their record survives every email change from lead through to paying member.

• Built and shipped to production, 26 July 2026
• Confirmed live: a real member changed their email at checkout, and their existing record was correctly updated rather than duplicated
• Apply Now form and packages page updated to carry this through automatically

A full review of every question asked across the whole member journey, cleaning up years of inconsistent and corrupted data along the way.

• Audited and fixed corrupted Mailchimp data across the full contact list
• All field decisions settled with you — funding fields simplified, new angel-investing questions added, Elevator Pitch & Book Recommendation made live-editable
• All changes live in Mailchimp and on the Apply Now form, 13 August 2026

The invisible plumbing behind the new member portal — secure sign-in, the new database, and the connection back to ChimpLink so a new member's information carries over automatically.

• Secure sign-in via Memberful, built and working
• New member database, structured around every field decision above
• Connection to ChimpLink built and tested — new members automatically get their existing information carried across

The actual member-facing product — the largest piece of work. Sign-in, profile (view and edit), photos, the member directory, messaging, and access control are all live.

• Sign-in screen and a personalized home page, styled to match your own preferred look
• Read-only profile page, showing everything carried over automatically
• Editing your own profile — changes now flow back to ChimpLink and Mailchimp automatically, so nothing goes stale
• Profile photos — upload with crop-to-fit, stored on your own DigitalOcean Space, with a real photo automatically pulled in from Gravatar for anyone who hasn't uploaded one yet
• Member directory & search — real working search and filters across name, company, location, industry, and investing focus (the old site's own search was actually broken/disabled)
• Access control — a lapsed membership now shows a clear renewal screen instead of the app, matching the old site's wording
• Consistent visual design across the whole app — the dark teal/glass look from your homepage now carries through Profile, Directory, and every member's page, plus an account menu matching your old site's
• Events — synced automatically from Luma, with a full events page and a home page preview, replacing the old site's plugin
• Messaging — real-time direct messages between members, plus an always-there messaging panel in the corner of the screen (styled after LinkedIn's own), so a conversation stays open while you carry on browsing

Getting the app running on real infrastructure and making sure existing members don't start from an empty directory on day one.

• Live on your own server, running continuously — not just on a developer's laptop
• Existing members migrated in automatically from Memberful and Mailchimp — 489 real members, 314 with their existing photo carried over
• Soft-launched on a test address first (gbxdev.mazespace.co.uk) so we can check everything for real before switching your actual members address over
• Switching members.gbxglobal.org itself over to the new app

Replaces the manual Mailchimp segment your team re-runs today to review new applications, with a simple approve/decline screen inside ChimpLink itself.

• Leads list with one-click approve/decline, showing every applicant's full answers
• Approve moves them straight to a payment link email (sent automatically, no extra step) — decline is reversible, so someone who re-applies later resurfaces automatically

Replaces the old way staff updated member data in bulk — editing directly in Mailchimp, with no checks on what was typed in. This does the same job with real safety around it.

• Filter to any set of members, download exactly that set as a spreadsheet, edit only what needs to change, and upload it back
• Every value is checked the same way a normal profile edit is before anything saves — you see exactly what will change first, and one bad row never blocks the rest of the file
• Large updates run in the background — close the browser and you'll still get notified in the app the moment it's done
• Real-world testing (including a real 77-member update) found and fixed two genuine gaps the same day: an extra safety guard so testing locally can never again accidentally write test data into your live Mailchimp audience, and a ChimpLink limit that was silently dropping some updates during a large batch — both fixed and re-verified with another large test afterward

The old site's Amex-Perks-style page of partner offers for members — spotted as a genuine gap while reviewing what was left, not something we'd deliberately left out.

• A "Member Benefits" page and a home page preview of the latest three, matching the old site's own layout and its place in the main menu
• Staff can post, edit, and remove a benefit directly on the page itself — an image, a title, and a description with the signup link or code written straight in, exactly how it worked on the old site
• Any link in a benefit's description becomes a real, clickable link automatically

Real push notifications on your phone when someone messages you — without needing a native app in the App Store. The app can now be added to your iPhone's home screen and behaves like an installed app, including live notifications.

• Add the app to your phone's home screen — it opens full-screen, with its own icon, just like an app from the App Store
• Real notifications when you get a new message and the app isn't open — no App Store, no native app to build and maintain
• If you're already using the app when a message arrives, you just see it appear live — no duplicate notification on top

Fixed a real bug: pasting a hyperlinked word copied from a doc or webpage into a benefit's description used to silently lose the actual link. The description field is now a proper rich text editor (bold, headings, lists, real links) instead of a plain text box.

Three new profile fields, visible to other members: a longer, LinkedIn-style "About" section for career history, "Looking for help with," and "Happy to help GBxers with" — the groundwork for the AI directory-matching bot, so members can find exactly who they want to talk to.

Company Website, LinkedIn, and Twitter/X used to show up as a raw web address on your profile — now they're proper buttons with icons ("Visit Website," "View Profile"), matching the rest of the app.

The Bulk Edit spreadsheet still pre-fills every current member ready for editing, exactly as before — but now each dropdown column (Contact Type, Industry, Stage, and the rest) shows its exact valid options right in the column header, so there's no more guessing why a value got rejected.

A new "Keep me signed in" option on the ChimpLink login screen, matching how Mailchimp's own login works — no more re-entering your password and authenticator code every time you step away for half an hour.

The login issue right after the last deploy came down to a database update that needed running by hand and got missed under deploy pressure. That's no longer possible — the app now applies any needed database updates itself, automatically, the moment it starts up, so deploying the code and updating the database can't get out of step again.