American Retirement Association & Sister Sites
A new multi-brand platform built from the ground up for the American Retirement Association and its affiliated organisations. Lead frontend developer on an agency team, working across React, TypeScript, Optimizely CMS, and C#/.NET to deliver a suite of six distinct association websites from a single shared codebase.
ARA and its affiliates, including ASPPA, NAPA, PSCA, and NTSA, each operated independent legacy sites with separate codebases, duplicated editorial workflows, and inconsistent user experiences. The goal was to consolidate these into a shared Optimizely platform that gave each brand full visual and content independence while reducing maintenance burden and enabling editorial teams to publish and manage content without developer involvement.
News & Editorial Platform
Each brand's news hub was built with a shared set of article components but fully configurable through Optimizely's content graph, allowing editors to control layout, featured stories, and content ordering independently per site. Article listing pages use server-rendered content with client-side filtering for category and date, maintaining SEO value while keeping interactions snappy.
Recommended Articles Feature
A personalised recommended articles feature surfaces contextually relevant content based on the current article's topic tags and the user's browsing history. Implemented as a client component that fetches recommendations asynchronously after initial page load, keeping core content server-rendered and fast while progressively enhancing the page with dynamic suggestions.
Events & Calendar System
Association members rely heavily on event listings for conferences, webinars, and chapter meetings. The calendar was built with an accessible list view for SEO and a month-grid view for at-a-glance scheduling. Events are managed entirely through Optimizely, with support for recurring events, multi-day events, and registration link integration, handled consistently across all six brand sites.
Member Account Portals
Each brand required a members-only area where users could manage their profile, view membership status, access exclusive content, and track CPE credits. The account portal is a protected client-rendered section communicating with the .NET backend through a typed API layer. State management is kept intentionally lean, scoped to the current session with optimistic UI updates for common interactions like saving preferences.
Ad Space & Sponsorship Management
A key revenue stream for several ARA affiliates is sponsorship and advertising from financial services firms. The platform needed a flexible ad space system that editors could configure, assigning sponsors to specific pages, date ranges, and placement zones. Ads are rendered server-side for performance and crawlability, with impression tracking added as a lightweight client-side layer.