The client
The Valley Insider is a local guide to Colorado's Roaring Fork Valley, from Aspen and Snowmass down to Glenwood Springs and up the Crystal River to Marble. It was started by a group of local filmmakers and brings together local news and history, a directory of local businesses, events, videos and photo galleries.
The challenge
The site had grown up on WordPress and was hard to take further. Its content (hundreds of business listings, hundreds of videos, news articles and events) sat in separate places that didn't connect well. Visitors had no easy way to find a business near them or see what was on this weekend. The business directory was also the main way the site could earn money, but it had no way for a business owner to take over their listing or pay for a better one.
The solution
I rebuilt the site from scratch as a custom Laravel application. All existing articles, business listings, videos and categories were imported from the old WordPress database, so no content was lost.
One place for everything in the valley
Visitors can explore the valley through six connected sections:
News & Stories: Local news and valley history, with category and tag filters and infinite scroll
Business Directory: More than 650 local businesses, filterable by town and category, each with its own profile page
Valley Map: An interactive map showing every listed business, clustered by area, with a link from each pin to the full listing
Events: More than 750 concerts, festivals, markets and community events, including "This Weekend" and "Next Week" views
Videos: Over 200 videos about valley towns, businesses and people, with filters and related videos
Image Galleries: Photo galleries of landscapes, wildlife and events, with a full-screen lightbox viewer
A single site-wide search covers businesses, news, events, videos and galleries at once. The site works fully on mobile.
A new revenue stream
The business directory now makes money. Local business owners can claim an existing listing or add a new one, verify their ownership by email domain, phone call or manual review, and pay for a Premium subscription through Stripe. Premium listings show contact details, a website, photo galleries, video and downloadable files, and carry a Premium badge. Owners manage their own subscription and update their card details on the site, without contacting the team.
A community that contributes
Visitors can create a free account and submit events, photo galleries and videos. Each submission goes into a review queue and the team gets an email notification, so content is checked before it goes live. Users manage everything they've submitted from a personal account dashboard.
A website the client controls
A new admin panel lets The Valley Insider team manage articles, videos, events, galleries, business listings, users and claim requests without a developer. Admin logins are protected by two-factor authentication.
Built to be found
Every page has proper search-engine metadata and social sharing previews. Articles, videos, businesses and events include structured data, so they can show up as rich results in Google. An automatically generated sitemap keeps search engines up to date as new content is added.
The launch
The new site replaced the WordPress site in a single planned cutover, and the old URLs redirect to the new ones. The site was built and tested on a separate staging subdomain before going live, and it now runs behind Cloudflare.
The results
Visitors can find businesses, events and stories across the whole valley in one place, on any device
The business directory has become a paid product, with recurring Premium subscriptions sold and managed fully online
Local businesses can sign up, verify their ownership and pay without the team having to step in
Community submissions keep the site growing, while the review step keeps quality in the team's hands
The team publishes and moderates all content themselves, which reduces ongoing development costs
Tech stack: Laravel, Filament, Alpine.js, Mapbox GL JS, Stripe, Twilio, Brevo, Cloudflare
