Context
Doolittle Lake Club is a private lake community in Norfolk, Connecticut. The club needed a secure, members-only website where shareholders and members could access documents, view community calendars, browse member directories, manage inventory, and receive newsletters — all behind a login wall with role-based access control.
The Challenge
The site had to serve two distinct user groups — members and shareholders — with different access levels. Shareholders needed access to financial documents, property records, and parcel information that members shouldn’t see. The platform also needed real-time weather, a community calendar synced with Google Calendar, secure document downloads, a newsletter system with role-based targeting, and self-service profile management — all within a clean, modern interface that non-technical members could navigate easily.
What We Built
Member Access Control
- Custom WordPress roles — Member and Shareholder — with multi-role support (users can hold both)
- Page-level access restrictions: shareholder-only content hidden from regular members
- Role-aware navigation: menu items automatically hidden based on user role
- Custom login flow with branded login form, password reset, and post-login redirect
- Admin dashboard locked for non-admin users, admin bar hidden
Document Management
- Two document CPTs — Club Documents (accessible to all members) and Owner Documents (shareholders only)
- Organized by category and year taxonomies with sidebar filtering
- Secure file download system — base64-encoded paths, logged-in user verification, forced download with proper MIME types
- File-type icons for PDF, Excel, Word, ZIP, and PowerPoint
Community Features
- Member Directory — searchable accordion with contact details, role-aware display (admins see additional fields)
- Shareholder Directory — property details, parcel IDs, map/lot numbers, stock information
- Inventory Management — CPT for tracking community assets with categories, locations, and owner assignments
- Local Listings — community marketplace/classifieds with category filtering and member submissions
- Self-service profile editing — members update their contact info, shareholders manage property details
Calendar & Weather
- Google Calendar integration via FullCalendar v6 — event modal display, ICS export, Google Calendar links
- Real-time weather widget in the topbar — OpenWeatherMap API with custom SVG icons, temperature (°F/°C), humidity, wind speed and direction, 2-minute caching
Newsletter System
- Custom newsletter CPT with role-based targeting — send to all, shareholders only, members only, or admins only
- Batch email processing via WP-Cron (25 emails per batch with throttling)
- Personalized emails with user name replacement and branded HTML template
- Send logging with timestamps, duplicate prevention, and archived HTML
Custom Gutenberg Blocks
- 15+ custom blocks: section, row, column, display, background, accordion (with FAQ schema), button (with secure download support), latest-posts (role-filtered), latest-documents, hero-slideshow, login-form, menu-selector
- 5 metadata blocks for managing post, page, inventory, document, and listing meta from the editor
Results
The club now has a fully self-contained private portal where members and shareholders access everything they need — documents, directories, calendars, weather, newsletters, and community listings — all managed from WordPress with proper role-based security. The admin team independently manages content, sends targeted newsletters, and maintains member records without any external service dependencies.