New E-Directory Platform

A Directory For Humans By Humans.

A new, client-first, user centric platform being written from scratch that focuses on empowering the owner (user) by making sure the platform adapts to them, the owner, instead of the owner adapting to it, as it commonly happens.

It is based on ideas gathered from the creator over a 20 year span, and ideas from many other business owners from all aspects of life and industries, with the need of a serious online platform that can handle their specific business model as close to an out of the box experience as possible.

This would be one of the first (if not the first) platform to be built where the platform adapts constantly to the user (Through constant feedback of ideas, features, bug reports and more) and not the user to the platform, like in most cases, where the user after purchasing the platform, needs to purchase widgets, modules and spend extra hours trying to make the platform as close to their own business and needs as possible, many times, without a clue on what to do, where to go, how to do it, or even how to adapt it to their needs, loosing precious time and money. The lack of a friendly and intuitive user design is evident in many cases like this and in many platforms we have had contact or worked with over the past 2 decades.

Note that the concept of asking clients what they would need in a platform is not new, but the fact that we use this as base to develop a whole platform from scratch, and with it, cover many scenarios where specific online business ideas lack, is our standard, and it is used to avoid many shortcomings that many users live with today, hence the current "modus operandi" in many popular platforms of asking for customization (if even possible) as a norm, paying 3rd party developers for changes (if any are possible), worrying about platform updates breaking custom work or even updates pushed by the platform itself breaking default behavior on the site, and with it, affecting your clients directly is a much too common day to day issue.

With the concept of having the client first and working together as a norm, all of this ends, since our believe is that all decisions should be managed by the owner of the site, everything should be optional to give the user the ability to choose what and how they want their site to look and behave, and the owner should have the final saying with how updates are managed, features work and the logic of their business behaves.

For example, customization works as a vertical layer, meaning, they add on top of the default functionality, instead of overwriting it, avoiding with this, all issues pertaining to updates affecting custom work or breaking default behavior. Updates are pushed to what the owner decides in a micro modular way, where updates could target specific features or parts of them, target only a beta or testing version of the platform instead of the live/production version, or they could target design changes without affecting any other part of the system. All along letting the owner know what the update entails, how it could affect their site or their custom work.

This does not end here though. In order to empower the owner, we also blur the need for a web designer, front-end developer, back-end developer, database administrator, system administrator, security advisor, SEO crew and even a cloud manager. All of this concepts, tasks and knowledge are integrated and automated into the platform based on the experience our team has had over the years. With this, the owner has far less chance of needing to hire a 3rd party to solve a business issue, or spent extra money of activities that could be otherwise automated. The owner will be able to cover areas of IT where they could previously not do without knowledge, at the same time avoiding them the time spent in learning how to code, having to dedicate days, weeks or months on learning a complete new field of technology or even needing to understand how things work, basically alleviating them from multiple types of stress / professions and simply focusing on their clients and their market strategy for their online business. We believe, an online business should be simple to use, intuitive and oriented towards what you are trying to accomplish from the beginning.

All of this, does not mean that the platform will include 100% of all modules needed for all businesses, but it will try very hard to include everything that the business owners would assume it is essential to their business and many other modules / extensions, widgets / addons / features that other platforms sell with an additional cost.

WHAT DOES THIS NEW PLATFORM OFFER?

It will tackle multiple business areas we have known and work with over time, so that the owner does not have to worry about them, but still has the power to decide:

Security - Zero day vulnerabilities, Automatic SSL, Live Monitoring & Unit Tests provide Daily & Weekly updates to the site, making sure Security receives the highest priority & care.

Stability - System provides a Smart and Unique way of handling Traffic, Rerouting, Load Balancing, Resource Usage, Resource Sharing, Backups & Snapshots & Bottleneck Detection.

Speed - To offer a faster development of the base of the platform, it is built & optimized using PHP 8.X + Python (Stage 1). This would be later migrated without any impact to GoLang (Stage 2) + Vue.JS showcasing the power & speed the platform can offer. Last stage (Stage 3), would include options for the design and creation of of mobile apps (iOS, Android) in a native way (Not webview nor hybrid) along with the option to create a PWA independently.

Adaptability - Adapt the platform to your business, not your business to the platform. Create stages for your site for production, development and testing. Decide how to adapt the platform to your needs, test out how it integrates and how it simplifies the way you manage and design all of it's functionality. Test small or large changes before sending them live with the support of A/B test logic. Create multiple versions of your site for geographical locations or needs.

Integration - Ability to integrate with many 3rd party solutions, from Amazon, Salesforce, Zoho, InfusionSoft & Hubspot to Payment solutions like PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout and more. Include streaming services and SMS/ Live Chat services. Just like Zapier, but this time, you have the control. You are also able to migrate from multiple other platforms. From Wordpress and E-Directory, to Brilliant Directories and Wild Apricot. Test your site with real data before going live.

Ease of Use - Built from the ground up thinking as a client, the user experience is based on a non-techy intuitive approach for the platform. Thinking as the actual user helps us deliver a more friendly, user thought design that also caters around amazing designs and enhanced user experiences. But we are not limited to this. Every section of the platform will have it's own documentation, video tutorials and even video guides to offer you ideas on how you can maximize their usage.

Flexibility - Based on a Modular approach, all parts of the system can be moved around, attached, enabled, merged and more. You set the rules of what is needed for your business and what you want to offer to your clients. Have a product section and want to merge it with the coupons sections. One click away and now you have products that support coupons and coupons that apply to products in multiple ways. Are you using an event feature, photo feature and video streaming feature. Merge them and now you have 3 features that talk to each other so you can do those Wedding events, or sales programs using all 3 at the same time. So yes, you could go from a simple blog, to an e-commerce, and end up as a e-directory or e-learning platform, all on the same day. Remember, you are in control.

Ownership - Control your own files, security and platform integration within your own Cloud Linux Based Servers, using your own resources. Never again depend on 3rd party "hostage hosting providers" that lack privacy, security, flexibility, scalability & stability, but worse yet, control your payments, files and information. But for those that would want to have support for their hosting services, we can also accommodate and take care of you.

Scalability - Advanced AI will notify you whenever more resources are needed, be it more RAM, CPU, Storage Space or even an automatic detection based on traffic. No more sending emails and tickets, or having to do this manually with your hosting provider or platform provider, you are in control. The system will know how to handle each situation based on simple rules and save you the trouble and related issues when scalability is in question.

Support - Includes multiple levels of support. From it's own CRM Ticketing system, to an ERP one, and from an internal support for your business to an external one for your members and clients. Additionally, you get an integrated helpdesk that lowers the responsive time of your IT Management team, apart from also teaching with its online course about how each part of the system works and some ideas that can kickstart your curiosity with the platform. Each module of the system has it's own fully documented (and constantly updated) course, to teach you about it, provide ideas on things you could do with it and create case scenarios for you to get familiar with in the business world.

Maintenance - Decide when and how to apply updates. Customize the experience of selecting which modules to update, which ones to freeze and even test out new features or do rollbacks using your own Development & Staging versions of your site. All of this without paying any additional fees. You decide and test updates, see changelogs and more.

WHAT ARE THE STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT?

The development of OED is divided into 3 stages:

STAGE 1 (Base Platform):

It focuses on creating the ground work, the base on which the rest of the platform, it's flexibility, adaptability and scalability will be based around. It will offer the following:

- Login System that includes Standard Login, Social Login, Group Login, Invitation Login & Referral Login

- Dynamic Modules which behave as features, addons or extensions in other products. The great thing about this are, that they act as LEGOS, you can take pieces of them off and adapt them to other modules. The default modules would be Coupon, Product, Article, Photo, Agenda, Event, Video, Job, Classified, Audio since this are found in many other platforms, but at the same time, this modules are generated by a Dynamic Module (The parent module) where you are able to dynamically add features to said module, fields, look and design and more, by simply clicking, dragging and nothing more. No previous knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP or Javascript.

- Ability to quickly adapt one module to another one. Meaning, create a complete module (eg: Automobile, Health, Restaurant, Religion) in less than 15 minutes or use an existing one as base.

- SEO Page Generation (Create pretty urls that follow Google guidelines and/or adapt to the way you wish the URLs to show).

- Backup System that handles full, incremental or snapshot backups so you can pick what can get stored without affecting other parts of the data.

- Integration with Google Servers. From Geolocating members, to geocoding, to addresses, maps and more.

- Import & Export System.

- Chat System

- Log & History of every event.

- Language Manager to be able to control the language of the whole site depending on where the users come from or what language they select on the homepage.

- Friendly Lead System

- Intuitive Website Builder (Drag elements on the site around, position them where you want, change background color or images, set font types and more. Create your own look.

- Dynamic Email System which offers an event based triggering system

- Banner Manager

- Free Trial System

- Image Optimizer

- Cropping Tool

- Category System for all Modules

- Calendar Manager

- Review Manager

- Member Cover System

- Member Management System

- Payment System (Option to offer multiple payment gateways, for the whole site, for specific membership levels or members)

- Flexible Search System for all Modules

- Template & Design Manager for Pages

- Enhanced Email Manager

- Subscription System

STAGE 2

This stage focuses on enhancing the functionality of the owner and its clients. It will offer:

- Basic CRM System which includes an integrated ticketing system, customer helpdesk, tracking & history and an enhanced billing.

- Basic ERP for Accounting, Staff and Projects.

- Ranking System

- Achievement System

- Store (For Products, Classified and others)

- Forum System

- Enhancements on Stage 1 based on Feedback from owners

- API System to integrate with 3rd party sites in an easy way.

- Feeder System (To send or receive information in JSON, XML or Rest calls)

- Beginning of the PWA System (Progressive Web App Support)

- SEO Smart System (Automatically updates SEO related parts of the system. Can be overridden by owner)

STAGE 3

This last stage finishes the whole Alpha stage of the platform and provides the base to launch the platform in a Beta version. This includes:

- Versioning System (Similar to Git)

- Enhanced Privacy Settings

- Ability to Clone or create snapshots of the site

- Ability to rollback parts of the site.

- Ability to send updates to social sites whenever a member publishes an item of any module.

- Ability to automate social media interaction (For Marketing)

- Streaming Service (For Live events)

- MAD (Our own Mobile App Development system or MAD for short that would include Android & iOS in a native way )