Building a Dynamic, Member-Focused Travel Event Platform

The Challenge

Agencia Exit wanted to change their Brilliant Directories site into a very personalized and interactive platform just for managing "Travel" events for their members. The standard Brilliant Directories event system wasn't dynamic or flexible enough for what they needed. Main challenges included building an advanced dynamic calendar that could be filtered by member/group, shown in different parts of the site, and most importantly, create code that members could embed to show their events on other websites. They also needed to add navigation specific to members (unique menus and sidebars), do extensive customization of forms and how things looked, and fix existing problems with the platform being unstable and having errors. These were caused by badly written code from earlier development work. At the same time, we also needed to change main BD functions like search and form validation.

The Solution

We built and set up a complete set of custom features, fixing existing issues and building powerful new features that worked closely with the Brilliant Directories platform:

1. Advanced Dynamic Travel Event Calendar

   We built a powerful custom calendar plugin made specifically for "Travel" events. This plugin offers multiple ways to see it (monthly, yearly), interactive navigation (you can browse months/years with AJAX, see event counts per day, click to see details without the page reloading), and smart filtering depending on where you are. It can show all active events on the whole platform (calendar-handler-general.php) or filter specifically to show only the events of the profile you are viewing (calendar-handler-profile.php). The calendar is fully responsive for all devices. A main new thing is that it automatically creates embeddable <script> code using calendar-generate-code.php. This lets each member easily put their personal event calendar onto any other website, greatly increasing how many people they can reach. 

2. Custom "Travel" Post & Profile Presentation

   We improved the detail pages for "Travel" events (a custom post type) with many extra fields (location, dates, times, boarding points, price, link to external Canva brochures) and strong logic for handling recurring events. We used a unique visual design with custom animations, styles, and fonts to make the presentation engaging and informative.

3. Specialized Dynamic Widgets

   We created custom Brilliant Directories widgets to show dynamic content all over the site. This includes a "Recent Events" slider (Recent Events.php) that has logic to show future events first, show photos, filter by active members, and offers flexible settings. A "Recent Members" widget (Recent Members.php) was also created to show members with key details like profession, location, rating, and verification status.

4. Member-Specific Navigation Systems

   We added custom logic to create dynamic menus and sidebars that change based on specific things, like a unique user ID (e.g., a custom menu just for user ID 36 using main_menu_agenciaExit_id36.php) or the member's subscription level. This gives a very personalized navigation experience made for individual members or groups.

5. Core Platform Refinements & Utilities

   We changed core Brilliant Directories functions, including the search, to support advanced filters like searching by future dates and recurring events, and custom sorting logic based on categories. We added custom JavaScript validation for certain required form fields. We integrated external services like embedding Canva brochures and showing a WhatsApp chat button based on the member or template (using conditions). Most importantly, we put a lot of effort into refactoring and cleaning up earlier, badly written code. We fixed errors and made the whole platform more stable and performant.

Technical Implementation Notes

This project involved important full-stack development. PHP was used a lot for backend logic, creating custom plugins (like the calendar), handling APIs (for making embed code), changing main BD functions (search, validation), and adding conditional logic. MySQL handled data storage, including custom logic for events and members. JavaScript (jQuery) and CSS were key for making the dynamic, interactive frontend (like AJAX loading, animations, responsive design), for form validation, and custom styling. Main techniques included creating custom Brilliant Directories Plugins, Widgets, and Hooks, working with custom database structures, making dynamic embeddable <script> code, adding complex conditional logic based on user/subscription IDs, integrating external services like Canva and WhatsApp, and doing important code refactoring and cleanup.