Future Ground

EnlightenNext began its life as a small publication called What Is Enlightenment? magazine. Somewhere in its two-decade lifetime, during the transition to one of the best-looking magazines of any genre, it became a sophisticated web presence serving hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

The main web site for EnlightenNext consists of about four thousand web pages from the dozens of issues of the magazine. All content-managed, cross-referenced by subject and contributing author. It serves as a dream tool for anyone interested in researching the cutting edge of consciousness and culture.

The project

The EnlightenNext web site was built over a decade, and had many twists, turns, and complete overhauls. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Weekly audio-visual service with some sexy buzzwords: CMS, CDN, SQL Server database, live streaming, newsletter delivery
• Customized online payment gateway for recurring billing, with sophisticated handling of failed credit cards
• Tie-ins to printed content, including subscriber self-management
• Theme pages, organizing multi-media content into subject areas for target audiences (and markets)
• Many other custom back-end systems with fancy names, including: an A/B testing engine, data integration across a handful of offsite platforms and technology partners, a hand-rolled email newsletter delivery service, a cross-referenced database of authors and topics, and more

Note: The site is no longer operational. The magazine ceased publication in 2011, and the organization has since folded.