Christchurch Community Hub

A community-powered local information platform built with Codex.

Comment

Inspiration

Useful local information in Christchurch is often scattered across social media posts, private chat groups, community pages, and word of mouth. Jobs, rentals, events, services, and practical guides quickly become difficult to find.

Community administrators also spend a large amount of time manually collecting, rewriting, checking, and reposting information.

I wanted to create one structured platform where residents can easily find useful local information, submit their own listings, and access practical community resources.

The first audience is Christchurch’s Chinese-speaking community, supported by an existing local information channel with around 1,600 followers. The platform is designed to expand to other communities, languages, and cities in the future.

I started this project because I was already running a Christchurch community information account and repeatedly saw how quickly useful posts became difficult to find.

What it does

Christchurch Community Hub brings local information into one searchable platform.

Main features include:

  • Classified listings for jobs, rentals, local services, community notices, and second-hand items
  • Category, location, and keyword filtering
  • Anonymous community submissions
  • Image uploads and submission tracking
  • Protected administrator and staff accounts
  • Moderation workflows for reviewing, editing, approving, rejecting, publishing, and archiving content
  • Local event listings and event management
  • Practical living guides
  • Restaurant offers and digital coupons
  • Cross-device synchronization through Supabase

Visitors can browse public information without creating an account. New submissions enter a protected moderation queue before they are published.

How we built it

The project was built from scratch during OpenAI Build Week using Codex with GPT-5.6.

I am not a professional developer, so Codex acted as my main development partner throughout the project. It helped with:

  • Product planning and feature breakdown
  • Responsive frontend development
  • Application architecture
  • Supabase database design
  • Authentication and role-based access
  • Row Level Security policies
  • Image storage and publishing workflows
  • Anonymous submissions and moderation
  • Coupon inventory and redemption logic
  • Testing, debugging, Git, and Vercel deployment

The application uses React, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Supabase, and Vercel.

The production version uses Supabase Postgres, Authentication, Storage, RLS, and RPC functions. A repository and service architecture separates application logic from data access.

Challenges we ran into

One major challenge was turning an informal social-media workflow into structured data without making the submission process difficult for ordinary users.

Other challenges included:

  • Protecting unapproved submission images
  • Designing safe administrator and staff permissions
  • Preventing duplicate coupon claims and redemptions
  • Handling errors without losing submitted form data
  • Synchronizing information across devices
  • Supporting mobile and desktop layouts
  • Testing Supabase security policies and database workflows

Codex was especially helpful when diagnosing permission, data-mapping, form-submission, and deployment issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The biggest accomplishment was moving from an initial idea to a functioning, deployed community platform in only a few days.

The project includes a real database, protected administration tools, anonymous submissions, image uploads, moderation, events, practical guides, digital coupons, and automated testing.

It also addresses a real community need and already has a potential launch audience through an existing Christchurch community-information channel.

For me personally, the most surprising part was seeing a working production platform come together in only a few days.

What we learned

I learned that Codex can help a non-developer participate meaningfully in complex software development.

I also learned that building a useful platform is not only about writing code. It requires decisions about user experience, permissions, privacy, moderation, data quality, testing, deployment, and long-term operation. Before this project, I had never built a full web platform. I learned that clear product decisions and continuous testing are just as important as writing code.

What's next

The next step is to launch the platform to Christchurch’s existing Chinese-speaking community and collect real user feedback.

Planned improvements include:

  • Multilingual support
  • Improved search
  • Stronger anti-spam and abuse protection
  • User reporting tools
  • Business self-service features
  • Better moderation tools
  • Expansion to other New Zealand cities
  • A future mobile application

Built With

Share this project:

Updates