Project Information
Status: Online
Visit Site: http://www.topcruiseclub.com
Top Cruise Club came to TECKpert to team up with their in-house development team to develop a social network for cruisers. The site has to be packed with all the social networking features including profiles, photo albums, status and activity feeds, blogs, microblogging, groups, site messaging, customizable pages, corporate profiles and groups just to name a few. The site was built from the ground up with applications (apps) developed for users that enhanced the experience for the user on the site. Those apps we created include:
- Price Investigator™ – the first fare tracking engine of its kind in the cruise industry, it monitors cruise prices and automatically notifies members when fares drops below the price they paid.
- Cruise Connect™ – a platform that allows members to find other members that will be on their same sailing
- Daily Deals™ – a deal finder application that allows members to set parameters and search for cruises accordingly
- T.R.I.P™ (Travel Reward & Incentive Program) – a system allowing members to earn points on the site to redeem for travel savings
- LENS™ – an innovative, geographically driven photo-sharing program
The project was a team effort between Top Cruise Club’s and TECKpert’s team to deliver the best social network for cruisers online.
Project description
To create an online social network where members can share photos, information, make friends, join and create groups, blog, save on cruises, and share in an online experience with other cruisers.
How we did it
We worked closely with Top Cruise Club to find out what where features cruisers would be looking for in a social network. Features and apps had to be created that bring value back to the member. And that's how we did it, integrating features you find in a social network, while creating new applications that are useful for a group of users (cruisers). It's a unique site in that it is one of the few online social networks that is created for a specific user group.
What we used
We touched on many technologies to create Top Cruise Club. In a nutshell, it's a bunch of PHP wrapped up in html and JavaScript. There was significant SQL work to increase the speed and reliability of the site. Optimization techniques were used to enable the content on the site to be polled by search engines. Working on this project enabled us to use various methods of programming and database optimization to create a scalable social network expandable to millions of users.
