The Challenge
FOAWA had spent years producing OUR CITY, OUR AIRPORT — a feature documentary about Albert Whitted Airport, one of the nation's oldest general aviation airfields and a constant target of waterfront development. They had a finished film, a slate of festival screenings, press coverage, and a donor base — but the existing WordPress site couldn't keep up. The team needed to add new screenings, press articles, sponsors, and BTS photos every week, and were dependent on a developer for every change.
On top of that, the documentary was about to enter a 'Watch From Home' phase: viewers around the country requesting a private streaming link. The previous site had no real way to handle that — no email verification, no spam protection, no record of who'd been granted access. FOAWA needed a single home that matched the production quality of the film, gave the team full self-serve control over every piece of content, captured viewer registrations safely, and processed donations natively — all without locking them into a CMS they'd have to fight every week.
Solutions
Custom Next.js 16 + Sanity CMS build
Replaced WordPress with a fast, custom Next.js 16 site backed by 7 Sanity schemas — screenings, press articles, sponsors, festival laurels, BTS photos, form submissions, and streaming settings — all editable by the FOAWA team without a developer.
Double opt-in streaming flow
Viewers register on the Watch From Home form, receive a confirmation email, and only after clicking the link do they get the private Vimeo link and password — managed through a single Sanity settings document the team can rotate any time.
Spam + bot protection on every form
Cloudflare Turnstile, honeypot fields, and submission-timing checks on the contact and registration forms. Real submissions land in a custom Sanity Studio dashboard with CSV export; bots get silently rejected.
Donation embed + SEO foundation
Native Apple Pay-ready donation form embedded directly on the donate page. Per-page canonical URLs, structured data, dynamic sitemap, GA4, and Google Search Console verification — built so the documentary's audience can find it on Google and AI search.
We replaced the WordPress site with a custom Next.js 16 build that the FOAWA team can run themselves. Every piece of content — screenings, press articles, sponsors, awards, behind-the-scenes photos — lives in Sanity CMS with role-based publishing, so Mervyn and the team can update the site as fast as new screenings and reviews come in. A custom Submissions tool inside Sanity Studio shows every form entry with status pills and CSV export, so the team always knows who's registered and who's been verified for streaming.
On top of that, we built the actual mechanics of the launch — a double opt-in email flow that confirms viewer addresses before granting streaming access, Cloudflare Turnstile bot protection on every form, transactional emails sent from the verified ourcityourairport.org domain, and a native donation embed. The site is fully indexed for Google and AI search engines, with structured data and a clean sitemap, ready to support the documentary's national rollout.
“Gauthier helped develop a website for our aviation nonprofit — and, as always, he delivered. His expertise as a full-stack engineer is truly exceptional, and I highly recommend him.”
— Mervyn Sharaf, Friends of Albert Whitted Airport
Key Outcomes
- Custom branded Next.js 16 site replacing WordPress, built mobile-first
- 7 Sanity CMS schemas — screenings, press, sponsors, laurels, BTS photos, submissions, streaming settings — all managed by the FOAWA team
- Double opt-in viewer registration flow with auto-delivered streaming link and password
- Custom Sanity Studio Submissions dashboard with status pills and CSV export
- Cloudflare Turnstile bot protection on every form
- Donation form embed processing payments natively on the site
- SEO + AEO foundation: per-page canonicals, structured data, sitemap, GA4, Search Console