ainley_ DIGITAL

Case study

Journey to Faith: idea in, delivered with 51 passing tests.

A calm, warm home for stories of faith. Visitors share their own stories, like and comment on everything, and the owner runs it all from one admin panel. Built by one senior engineer with supervised agents.

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At a glance

Site
journeytofaith.co.uk
Built with
Laravel 12, Filament 3, Tailwind CSS 4
Team
One senior engineer, supervised agents
Tests
51 passing, 161 assertions
Price
A fraction of a typical agency quote

Live

The problem

What the site had to be.

  • Calm

    For people looking for comfort and help through faith. Warm and homely, with large, readable type and generous spacing.

  • Open

    Visitors can share their own stories, and like and comment on every page, post and story.

  • Safe

    Anything the public can post is a target for spam and abuse, so nothing goes live without being checked.

  • Easy to run

    Pages, posts, stories and comments managed from one admin panel, without a developer.

The project in 26 seconds

Idea in. Delivered.

The whole project, step by step: the brief, the concept, the sign-off, the feature we advised against, then the build, the tests and the launch. Each step is set out in full below.

journeytofaith.co.uk
Music only, no narration. The steps are written out below.

The approach

From idea to live, in eight steps.

  1. 01

    Idea in

    The brief: a calm, warm home for stories of faith. Mobile-first, large readable type, and room for visitors' own stories.

  2. 02

    Concept out

    A clickable HTML concept for desktop, tablet and mobile, so decisions were made on something real rather than a static mock-up.

  3. 03

    Approved

    The concept was signed off before any production code was written.

  4. 04

    The ask

    Partway through came a request for a new feature. Our answer was "not yet".

  5. 05

    Engagement first

    Likes, comments and a "Most liked" view in the admin instead, so the next feature is chosen from real numbers.

  6. 06

    Coded

    Agents wrote the controllers, models and admin screens. A senior engineer reviewed every line.

  7. 07

    Tested

    51 automated tests covering spam, rate limits, escaping and moderation.

  8. 08

    Delivered

    Live at journeytofaith.co.uk, with an admin panel the owner runs day to day.

Fast. Secure. Well priced.

The ask

“Could I have this?” Not yet. Traffic and engagement first.

  • Another feature would have meant another invoice, for something nobody had asked for yet.
  • Likes, comments and the "Most liked" view show what visitors actually respond to.
  • When the time comes, the next feature is chosen from real numbers, not a guess.

Security, designed in from the start.

Each one is checked by the automated tests.

  • A hidden honeypot that turns away spam bots
  • Rate limits on story submissions
  • Visitor stories escaped, and markup sanitised
  • Every comment held for moderation
  • Only approved, published content can be seen or liked
  • Oversized image uploads rejected

The outcome

What the client got.

  1. 01

    Fast

    One senior engineer took it from brief to launch, with agents doing the volume work. There were no hand-offs between designers, project managers and juniors.

  2. 02

    Secure

    Spam protection, rate limits, safe rendering and moderation, each backed by tests that prove it works.

  3. 03

    Well priced

    A fraction of a typical agency quote, and no invoice for a feature that wasn't needed yet.

Related

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