A 2011 website. A platform in a day.
This is the fast version. If you want the whole story — the decisions, the tradeoffs, the things that didn’t go smoothly — that’s one click away at the bottom.
- 1
Before
A public website built in 2011. No developer. No support.
Polls that didn’t work. Generic features nobody asked for. Dues by hand. A corkboard for planning.
One volunteer, quietly running IT for fifty families.
- 2
What ForgeKit built
Software made around their actual dues, events, and privacy rules — not a template they had to adapt to.
- 3
Day one
- Applications
- Member accounts
- Dues tracking
- Event RSVPs
- Coordinator dashboard — live.
- 4
Then reality happened
A core assumption about how accounts worked broke, late on day one.
It was redesigned and shipped the same day.
- 5
Why that was possible
ForgeKit is built for change, review, and reuse — not just speed.
- 6
Today
Built around how this group actually runs.
Their dues, their events, their privacy rules — not a template they had to adapt to. Maintained going forward, so a broken update is ForgeKit’s problem to catch, not theirs.
- 7
Since then
Over a hundred real changes, asked for in plain language, made real.
That’s the ownership story — the fast launch was just day one. ForgeKit still reviews each change before it ships.
The long version