Spierziekten Vlaanderen

Spierziekten Vlaanderen is a volunteer organisation that informs, supports and brings together people with neuromuscular conditions and those around them. That asks a lot of a digital platform.

Above all, the public website needed to be clear. People come for information about muscle diseases, diagnosis groups, care topics, activities, news, contacts and ways to get support. They are often looking for clarity at a difficult moment.

The requirements also extended beyond the public website.

The association had member information, a webshop and, later, a much broader membership system. When we started that second phase, around 490 families were already members. A team of volunteers with limited technical experience needed to manage memberships, family details, access to member content, activity registrations and payments.

Spierziekten Vlaanderen wanted a solution that fitted the way it works. The membership system therefore needed to be part of the same platform as the website.

We built an online membership process with registration, checkout and payment. After purchase, a membership is created, the user receives the appropriate role and an onboarding process guides them through adding their family details. Professional members follow a different process from regular members, which is also built into the system.

An important detail: a membership covers more than a single account. Behind it is a family structure, with family members, diagnoses and the access rights that follow from them. That makes it considerably more complex than a standard login and paywall.

The activities extension was probably where most of the hidden complexity lay.

Each activity can work differently. Some are free. Others have one price for everyone, or separate member and non-member prices. Some have variants for adults, children or collection options. There are also rules for members-only activities and activities that require at least three months of membership.

We built this logic into the platform to match how the association organises its activities.

An activity can link to external registration or be handled entirely within the platform. For internal registrations, the linked product determines the correct registration process. Members can add family members at the member price. Non-members can add other participants. Deadlines are enforced. Free registrations are confirmed immediately, while paid registrations go through Mollie. Participant records are created only after successful payment.

The technical details serve a simple purpose: the association’s rules are part of how the platform works, so people do not have to apply them manually using a separate guide.

Spierziekten Vlaanderen now has a platform that brings public information and membership together while keeping both clear and accessible.

Visitors can find information about muscle diseases, diagnosis groups, care topics, activities and the association’s services. Members can join or renew online, manage family details, read content relevant to their diagnosis, view magazines and register for activities. Payments take place online, and administrators can track memberships, participants and registrations.

For the volunteer team, the difference is even greater.

Tasks that previously ran into the limits of a standard platform are now handled within the process itself: who has access, who needs to renew, who has registered for what, what has been paid and which participants belong to each activity. The association benefits from these practical improvements every week.

They make a difference in everyday work.

Administration depends less on knowledge held by individuals, email follow-up and manual cross-checking. That is probably the most valuable outcome of the project.