A Digital Voting Portal For US Presidental Elections

A Digital Voting Portal For US Presidental Elections

BlueStateDate & RedStateDate are two political dating websites that connect politically like-minded people, giving them an opportunity to discuss their opinions on politics and politicians, and find compatible matches.

The Problem

Political Matchmakers, LLC required to develop 2 political dating websites – BlueStateDate.com and RedStateDate.com – targeted toward Democrats and Republicans.
The goal was to integrate a full range of social networking features on dating websites to encourage political opinions and dialogue among potential matches.
Besides, the websites would also help members to have the most comprehensive view possible of where each individual stands on the important political issues.

The Challenge

Large Member Base

Since the websites were scheduled to be launched around the 2012 U.S. presidential elections, a major user activity was expected. The challenge was to build a resilient web architecture that could handle a large user base and the resulting data.
Integration of a Real-Time Chat Tool
Both webs wanted a real-time chat tool to attach value to the social networking capabilities of the websites.
Payment Gateway Integration
To manage transactions and subscriptions on BlueStateDate and RedStateDate websites, Political Matchmakers required a reliable and secure payment gateway to be integrated with the websites.

The Solution

Scalable Website Architecture
Anticipating a heavy traffic load on the websites, load balancing was implemented both at the server-side and the application level. It made the webs’ architecture scalable sufficient to handle heavy user traffic.
Integration of Comment Chat Tool
Comment conversation a third-party chat tool was used instead of developing the latest chat tool from scratch. It saved us valuable development time & gave us access to stable modules compatible with multiple browsers.
Recurly Payment Gateway Implementation
Custom code was written for the Recurly client so that Recurly’s API services could be used to manage transactions and subscriptions. Some customized customers APIs were also introduced to customize the Recurly payment gateway.

Social Presence

A Facebook page was also created to make dating websites fully loaded with social networking features.

The Result

High User Engagement

Both BlueStateDate and RedStateDate websites were a huge success, attracting over 5,200 users within a short span of 3 months during the U.S. presidential elections in 2012.

Substantial Media Coverage

The dating webs were highlighted on major media sites such as ABC News & social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+, which added to the visibility and popularity of the websites.

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• Category:
  Web Development
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