Updates This Week (March 9 - 15)
This was a massive week of progress on Congregation Hub. The biggest thing we did this week was to submit the app to the iOS App Store. Getting there took a lot of work. Currently I'm testing the app on Android. It's pretty much ready to go and preparing to probably submit that tomorrow.
As I've created the app for phones I've really really enjoyed the look and feel and some of the changes that I'm seeing on the phone version. So I'm also identifying parts of the web application that can be improved with things that I've learned from the phone.
I've already changed the font, icons, navigation, some of the colors to match what's going on in the phone so they feel more cohesive. That work is going to progress this next week as we work on some areas of the web app that are really kind of ugly and need a lot of design and UX attention.
I'm debating whether or not to put website management into the mobile app. On the one hand, there are going to be people, especially in mission context, that don't have access to a laptop. On the other, this is one area where I just can't see editing a website on a phone being a good user experience.
Anyway, here is the update.
Flutter Mobile App (Major Progress)
The new Flutter app saw rapid development this week, with nearly every major feature area built out:
- Feed & Social — Full API-backed feed with filtering, pagination, pull-to-refresh, interactive like buttons, and a comments bottom sheet
- People Management — People screen with role-based views, search, filtering, and detailed person profiles with contact info, family, and groups
- Post Creation — Full post creation, editing, and management flow
- Groups — Groups management with member add/remove
- Calendar & Events — Event creation and editing screens with image uploads optimized for large phone photos
- Families — Family list, detail, create, and edit screens
- Attendance — Attendance tracking feature replacing the Events tab for admins, with attendance history, filters, service type creation, and metrics screen with charts
- Sermons — Sermon browsing screens
- Dashboard — Admin dashboard screen
- Service Planning — Full service planning flow with onboarding
- Prayer Requests — Prayer request section with printable handout (fonts and layout polished)
- Church Settings — Church details screen, donate and manage admin screens
- Account Management — Account deletion, privacy policy, and terms of service screens
- Invite Flow — Fixed invite code handling
- App Store Prep — Prepared and submitted for app store review; fixed Android back button behavior
Web App Redesign
- New navigation layout — Swapped primary and secondary navigation to match the Flutter app's structure
- Updated icons — All icons switched to Material icons to match the Flutter app
- Card and menu refactor — Refreshed card components and expanding menu system
- Font change — Switched to Inter font to match the mobile app
- Service Types page — Redesigned with single-column row layout
- Attendance History page — Redesigned with accordion layout
New API Endpoints
Built out extensive API support to power the Flutter app:
- Post feed with group-based filtering, like toggle, comment CRUD
- People with role-based filtering, search, person detail/update
- Groups CRUD and super admin endpoints
- Families CRUD
- Attendance tracking, service types, attendance history, and metrics
- Service planning with onboarding flow
- Sermons and sermon lookup
- Dashboard data
- Events creation with image uploads
- Church details
- Account deletion
Public Site & Onboarding
- Public support page added
- Home page and blog navigation fixes
- Updated terms of service and privacy policy
- Spam filtering added to registration
Housekeeping
- Removed Mailcoach integration
- Added review church seeder and sample CSV for testing
- Fixed API returning relative paths for thumbnails and logos