Association website & management tool
Search
Live since August 2026, the site replaces, according to the association, what used to circulate between emails, scattered forms and spreadsheets; the conference is now prepared entirely online.
The need
SEARCH brings together PhD students and early-career researchers in Amiens through events: meetups, workshops, and an annual conference. Until now, memberships, registrations and paper submissions went through emails, scattered forms and spreadsheets. The board, made of volunteers who change regularly, needed a single tool, in French and English, usable without technical skills.
The deciding constraint was hosting. The association already had a basic web hosting plan that runs PHP and provides a database. A first version, built on a JavaScript framework, needed a server running at all times: it could not work there. I dropped it and carried over what it had settled — data model, design, business rules — into a version that runs on that hosting, with no extra subscription.
What I built
- Memberships: configurable seasons, request by the member, approval by the treasurer with amount and payment method, history, export.
- Events: public calendar, registration with guests, capacity and automatic waiting list, questions set by the board.
- Conference: step-by-step registration, abstract with a word limit, structured co-authors and laboratories, meal choices with quantity summary, poster upload, committee decision with automatic email, programme built from the accepted submissions.
- Bilingual news, a contact form with request tracking, and a personal space for each member.
How it works
Every public page carries an "Edit" bar leading to its own management screens, according to the signed-in person's rights. Rights are granted one by one (news, events, conference, memberships, requests, accounts); a role on the board grants nothing by itself.
A preview mode lets the board see the site as a member and try a form before opening it: every check runs, but nothing is saved. An unpublished poster is only accessible to its author and to the board.
The site works without JavaScript; it only adds comfort. Updating it is a matter of uploading files, with no build step: the association is not tied to any particular tool to maintain it.
What it changes
The site has been live since 17 August 2026. According to the association, it brings together in one place what used to circulate between emails, forms and spreadsheets. The conference is prepared end to end online, and speaking times are shown when one picks a format: there is no longer any need to write to the board to find out.
What the site does not do yet: managing the association's budget.
Technologies
PHP 8 and MySQL with no framework or dependency, bilingual French / English, optional sign-in with Google or Microsoft.