THNK World: How we equipped a collaborative learning platform for success

Helping leaders be more aware and responsible when addressing some of the world’s most intricate challenges. Those are the main values of THNK, a certified B-corp that offers leadership programs to both individuals and corporations. On a mission for more human leadership, THNK has developed THNK World, an open school with online programs to grow mindsets, rehearse interpersonal skills, and build leadership habits.

The challenge: Overcoming the limitations of WordPress

When they first contacted us, THNK already had a WordPress website that came with certain limitations in terms of adding new features. To address this issue, they decided to replace WordPress with a custom-made CMS. THNK aimed to develop a highly customizable, up-to-date, and scalable CMS solution that would allow them to effortlessly create, edit, update, and remove website content.

The team: We are THNK’s core development team

THNK needed a dedicated team that would be able to work alongside their in-house developers. In addition to strong technical experience in Typescript, ReactJS, ChakraUI, NodeJS, MongoDB, and Fastify, they were looking for professionals who would help them make the right business decisions, exactly when needed. Reliable technical partners who would participate in internal meetings, develop strategies, and share their expertise in areas of cybersecurity and deployment.

That is where Vega IT stepped in, helping them build the entire system from scratch. We provide them with a two-person team of a full-stack developer and a front-end developer who work alongside their in-house developers, proposing new ideas, technologies, and solutions.

We are a part of their core development team and the only developers who have worked on all areas of the project, from THNK’s centralized CMS to back-end architecture and front-end in React for their social learning platform.

The result: Process automation and an intuitive user flow

The focus of the project is on improving current users’ experiences. And, as THNK’s tech partner, that’s what we’ve achieved. We created a highly user-friendly interface, an easily navigable website UX, and gamified user experiences.

How did we achieve that?

Replacing WordPress with a custom CMS

At first, we co-created a custom CMS in collaboration with the client’s in-house team. From the very beginning, our team’s focus has been on deployment optimization and improved user flow and user management – on both the back and the front of the platform. The goal? Achieving spotless user experience. Namely, the client can now add different user types, tags, slots, and send invitations – quickly and effortlessly.

To create a bespoke CMS solution, we’ve introduced a React client with custom components for the website, with Chakra UI on top connecting to a REST API. A Bitbucket Pipelines provider is used to create deployment strategies. Our focus is also on improving security systems across all applications.

Optimized deployment and enhanced user experience

In the past, companies within the platform were managed manually. We helped THNK automate many processes, including client invitations, system backup, and reservation scheduling. How? By updating the deployment system and introducing parallel deployment features, which has made the entire process highly streamlined, faster, and frictionless.

Soon, we’re planning to implement connections, a functionality that will make the entire platform one huge social network for learning.

Knowledge sharing and expert consultations

We are more than just another software development company for them. Instead, we focus on understanding their core challenges and providing them with solutions that bring innovation and new opportunities.

One such example is the improvement of the client’s cybersecurity. We recommended that they switch to container hosting instead of their legacy infrastructure. Once they implemented this solution, their data security has significantly increased.
Adding new functionalities

Recently, we've implemented a complete set of features for free and paid subscriptions in which admins are able to manage subscriptions used and see important information related to those same subscriptions and users.

Closely related to subscriptions, we've also implemented discounts that lower the initial price of the paid subscription. They can also be managed by admins in a similar fashion as subscriptions.

Aside from discounts, we've implemented a country-specific VAT % manager, where admins can input the VAT rate per country, which can then be applied when users make a transaction for a specific subscription.

The tech stack

Front end:

• ReactJS
• Typescript
• CSS

Back end:

• NodeJS
• Express
• Fastify
• MongoDB
• Typescript

CMS:

• ReactJS
• Typescript
• ChakraUI

Deployment:

• SSH (OpenSSH)
• BitBucket Pipelines
• Linux