Project subtitle / summary
Rise Up NGO aggregator was a WordPress-based platform that automatically collected news, activities and opportunities from NGOs across Macedonia through RSS feeds.
Duration
2018 — development and public beta. A homepage snapshot is preserved from January 18, 2019.
Tech stack
WordPress, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, RSS Feed Aggregation.
Overview
Rise Up NGO Aggregator
Rise Up NGO aggregator was a web platform created to promote daily activities and information from non-governmental organisations across Macedonia. I founded the project and worked on its development.
The platform automatically collected updates through RSS feeds from NGO websites, bringing different types of information into a single browsing experience. The preserved homepage includes news, research, calls and announcements, videos and projects, reflecting the range of information published by organisations.
Riseup.mk is no longer active. This case study documents the project through its archived website and contemporary media coverage.
The Challenge
NGO updates can cover very different needs: learning about an activity, finding a call for participation, reading research or discovering a job opportunity. When those updates are spread across separate websites, readers need to know which organisations to follow and where to look.
The challenge for Rise Up was to give this information a shared destination while keeping the different content types understandable. The platform’s purpose was visibility and discovery: helping people encounter updates from the NGO sector through one place.
My Role / Contribution
I was the founder and developer of Rise Up. My contribution was to the project’s concept and technical development.
Rise Up was a team initiative rather than a solo project. Contemporary reporting also identifies separate marketing and PR, journalism and camera roles. My role in this case study is specifically the platform’s founding and development.
Development Process / Approach
How the Rise Up NGO Aggregator Used RSS Feeds
Rise Up automatically retrieved published updates from NGO websites through their RSS feeds. This brought information from multiple organisations into one platform without requiring readers to visit each website separately.
RSS aggregation was part of the implemented web platform. The exact import schedule and feed-processing tools are not specified in this case study.
The preserved site used WordPress and the Jannah theme. Its content-led layout organised updates into distinct sections instead of treating every item as the same type of announcement.
News, research, calls, advertisements, videos and projects appeared in the navigation. The homepage also presented recent updates and an open-jobs section. This structure provided different entry points into the information collected by the platform.
For a community information platform, those entry points matter: someone looking for an opportunity has a different immediate need from someone browsing news. The archived layout offers a record of how Rise Up presented those categories at the time.
Results & Impact
The Rise Up NGO aggregator reached a publicly accessible beta stage in 2018 and received coverage from IT.mk. The preserved homepage contains dated NGO updates and provides a record of the platform’s content and presentation.
Its place in my portfolio is as a community-focused development project: an attempt to make NGO information easier to discover through a shared platform. The archive and media article allow readers to examine that work even though the original service is no longer running.
No verified visitor totals, organisation counts or measured engagement results are included in this case study.
Key Metrics
- Content collection: Automatic aggregation through RSS feeds.
- Public beta: Reported in June 2018.
- Team: Four people, as described in the IT.mk article.
- My role: Founder & Developer.
- Archived homepage snapshot: January 18, 2019.
- Media coverage: IT.mk, June 11, 2018.
- Current status: Archived — no longer active.
Lessons & Takeaways
Rise Up illustrates how a shared information platform can serve a specific community need. The technical website is one part of that idea; the way information is grouped and presented is equally central to the browsing experience.
It also provides a useful reminder about documenting past work. An archived interface, a clear description of individual responsibilities and a contemporary publication can preserve the context of a project after its original website has gone offline.
Explore more of my projects for other examples of my development work.
Design credit / scope note
Rise Up was implemented using WordPress and the existing Jannah theme. The underlying theme and its design system are third-party work. My documented role was founder and developer of the platform; this case study does not claim authorship of Jannah’s original design or theme code.
The 2018 article discussed a mobile application and SMS notifications using Twilio as planned or developing features. They are not presented here as completed deliverables.
Media Coverage
Rise Up Featured on IT.mk
IT.mk covered Rise Up on June 11, 2018, in an article by Dejan Sokoloski. The report introduced the platform, its team and its intended purpose, identifying me as its founder and developer.
