Web portal development for the
Indian Society of Cell Biology
A full-stack public website and admin CMS for ISCB — a registered scientific society founded in 1976 at Banaras Hindu University. We built everything from the homepage to the admin portal, managing events, awards, members, newsletters, and more.
1976
Society founded
9
Admin modules
7+
Public pages
3
Lecture series
The Challenge
ISCB had decades of records, events, awards, and members with no central digital home. They needed a platform powerful enough to manage everything internally, while giving the scientific community a professional, navigable public website — all operated by non-technical society staff without developer support.
Platform Walkthrough
Society Homepage
The public face of ISCB — a hero section that communicates the society's 50-year legacy instantly, with a newsletter subscription widget, upcoming events preview, and a past moments gallery. A popup auto-surfaces the latest event on every visit.
Upcoming Event Popup
On every page load, the most recent upcoming event surfaces in a modal — title, date, venue, and direct links to register or learn more. It ensures no member misses a key conference or workshop.
Events — Discovery & Listing
Events are split into Upcoming, Ongoing, and Past tabs with poster thumbnails, dates, and locations. Researchers can scan what's relevant to them at a glance and jump straight to registration.
Event Detail + Google Calendar
Every event has a full detail page — poster, rich description, venue, date/time. An 'Add to Calendar' button pushes the event directly to the user's Google Calendar via OAuth2, no copy-pasting required.
Organization & History
The Organization section covers the society's founding in 1976 through a tabbed layout — About, Executive Committee, History, and Guidelines — giving members and visitors a complete picture of ISCB's governance and legacy.
Newsletter Archive
Decades of Cell Biology newsletters are available as downloadable PDFs, sortable and searchable. Video resources are listed alongside. Members can catch up on any volume from any era.
Admin — Event Management
Admins create and edit events with a rich form — multiple poster image uploads, optional brochure PDFs, event type, start/end datetime, registration link, and venue. All fields update live on the public site.
Admin — Executive Committee
Each year's executive committee is managed through a dedicated editor — presidents, vice-presidents, secretaries, and members can be added, edited, or removed with full role assignment.
Admin — Access Control
A SuperAdmin can create and manage admin accounts with role-based access — regular admins handle content, while SuperAdmin controls user management. All accounts are fully auditable.
Full Feature Overview
Every feature built into the platform, at a glance.
Public Website
Homepage hero + newsletter widget
Society branding with a newsletter subscription widget that emails new subscribers
Upcoming event popup
Auto-surfaces the latest upcoming event in a modal on every page load
Past moments gallery
Swiper-powered image slider showcasing the society's events and history
Member directory
Searchable, paginated list of all society members with name, institution, and membership number
Membership application form
Public form for prospective members to apply — submissions stored and managed in admin
Student awards listing
Full history of student award recipients with year, conference name, and presentation type
3 endowment lecture series
Dedicated pages for Prof. S.P. Ray-Chaudhuri, Prof. Jyotirmoy Das Memorial, and Prof. Rita Mulherkar Award Lectures
Newsletter & video archive
PDF newsletters downloadable by volume/number; video resources with thumbnail previews
Contact form with SMTP
Enquiry form sends a structured HTML email directly to ISCB admin inbox via Nodemailer
Admin Dashboard
JWT cookie auth
HTTP-only cookie auth with fallback to Bearer header; three roles: user, admin, superAdmin
Events CRUD
Create/edit events with multiple poster uploads, optional brochure PDF, event type, date range, registration link, and venue
Executive committee management
Add/edit/remove committee members per year with photo, role (president, secretary, treasurer, etc.) and display order
Award management
Full CRUD for student award recipients across all years and conferences
Member management
Add, edit, delete society members; searchable and paginated table
Lecture series management
Manage all three named lecture series independently with their own award entries
Newsletter & resource CRUD
Upload PDF newsletters to Cloudinary; add video resources with thumbnails; edit or delete any entry
Subscriber management
View all newsletter subscribers; trigger bulk emails to all subscribers or all registered members
Admin user management
SuperAdmin can create, edit, and delete admin accounts with role assignment
Technical Features
Google Calendar OAuth2
Push any event to a user's Google Calendar — OAuth flow stores refresh token in cookie for future use
Multi-image upload
Events support multiple poster images; auto-deletes old Cloudinary files when replaced
PDF upload + delivery
Newsletters and event brochures upload to Cloudinary and are served as direct download links
Server-side pagination
All list APIs support page, limit, search, sortBy, and order — efficient for large datasets
AES-256-CBC password encryption
Admin passwords stored with AES-256-CBC encryption
Regex-safe search
All search queries are escaped before MongoDB regex matching — prevents injection
Image cropping before upload
react-easy-crop lets admins crop committee member photos before uploading
Vercel Speed Insights
Performance monitoring integrated for ongoing visibility into page load metrics
Tech Stack
