Two friends at a cafe table looking at a smartphone together

// Consumer Social & Local Business

FavePage

Platform Takeover & Rebuild: Mobile App, Back Office & Marketing Site

Took over the FavePage platform — a social recommendations network where people share the places and things they love and businesses get discovered by word of mouth — and rebuilt every client on a modern TypeScript stack: a new iOS and Android app from one Expo codebase, a standalone back-office console at app.favepage.com, and a new marketing site with a public, search-indexed directory of FavePages. The existing API and ArangoDB database on Azure kept serving throughout.

Clients Rebuilt: App, Admin & Site

iOS + Android

One Expo Codebase

10,000+

Places in the Public Directory

TypeScript

Across App, Admin & Site

// Product tour

Inside the Build

Marketing site

favepage.com: the home page, the businesses page and the public FavePage directory.

Next.js 16React 19Tailwind CSSVercelfavepage.com

FavePage home page hero reading Connect with friends, share your faves — Home page

Browse FavePages directory listing recommended local businesses with photos — Browse FavePages: a public, indexable directory of recommended places

Businesses and Professionals page on favepage.com — The pitch to businesses and professionals

FavePage home page on a phone — The home page on a phone

Back office

The admin console at app.favepage.com, shown in its demo mode with sample data — no real accounts.

ViteReact 19TypeScriptTanStack QueryZodVercel

FavePage admin dashboard with pending approvals, users, waitlist and posts counts and a new-accounts chart — Dashboard with pending approvals and new accounts (sample data)

All FavePages list filtered to businesses with approval status, faves and last update — Every FavePage on the platform, filterable by type, city, category and status (sample data)

Five-step FavePage editor showing the contacts step for a bookstore — Step-by-step FavePage editor with approval status (sample data)

Users table with roles, status, FavePage counts and join dates — User moderation with roles and bans (sample data)

Mobile app (iOS & Android)

Screens from the FavePage store listing. The rebuilt Expo app carries the same design system to both stores.

ExpoReact NativeTypeScriptEAS BuildFastlaneplay.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.favepage.app

FavePage app screen showing a restaurant FavePage under the headline All your faves in one place — All your faves in one place

Business FavePage for a wellness center under the headline Create a FavePage for your business — A FavePage for a business

Add a Fave screen listing business, profession, book, movie, TV show and podcast — Add a fave: businesses, books, movies, shows and more

Save things for later

Activity feed showing a friend's new fave under the headline See your friends' activity — See your friends' activity

// The problem · 4 pain points

The Challenge

FavePage came to 27nodes with a live product: an API, a graph database, a mobile app, and one web bundle serving both the public website and the admin console. The owner wanted each piece easier to change and ship on its own, and a public site that could bring in search traffic, without pausing the platform or changing the API the apps depend on.

Website and admin in one bundle

The public site and the admin console shipped as a single app, so a change to one meant a release of both

A public site search engines could read

Business FavePages were the platform's best content, and the owner wanted them indexed and findable in search

Two stores, one team

The mobile app had to ship to both the App Store and Google Play from one codebase, with repeatable release builds

A live API to build against

Every new client had to work against the API as deployed, preserving each endpoint's contract

// How it works

How It Fits Together

Three new clients, rebuilt one at a time against the API already in production.

Rebuilt by 27nodes

New TypeScript clients, each deployed on its own

Mobile App

Expo app for iOS and Android from one codebase

Back Office

Vite and React console at app.favepage.com

Marketing Site

Next.js site with a public FavePage directory

01
Mobile App
Expo app for iOS and Android from one codebase
02
Back Office
Vite and React console at app.favepage.com
03
Marketing Site
Next.js site with a public FavePage directory

Release & Hosting

Repeatable builds for every channel

EAS Build + Fastlane

Staging and production builds for both stores

TestFlight & Play

Testing tracks before every store release

Vercel

Hosts the back office and the marketing site

01
EAS Build + Fastlane
Staging and production builds for both stores
02
TestFlight & Play
Testing tracks before every store release
03
Vercel
Hosts the back office and the marketing site

Platform (kept running)

The API and data the apps are built against

Express API

Node.js API on Azure Container Apps

ArangoDB

Graph database of people, pages and faves

Azure Blob Storage

Photos and media for FavePages and posts

01
Express API
Node.js API on Azure Container Apps
02
ArangoDB
Graph database of people, pages and faves
03
Azure Blob Storage
Photos and media for FavePages and posts

// What we built

Our Solution

Mobile App Rebuild (iOS & Android)

Rebuilt the app on Expo with strict TypeScript, expo-router, TanStack Query, Zustand and NativeWind, matching the shipped app's design system. Builds run on EAS Build with Fastlane lanes for TestFlight, Google Play testing tracks and production, with a separate staging app so staging and production never mix. Push notifications move to Firebase Cloud Messaging on both platforms.

Back-Office Console

Split the admin into its own Vite, React 19 and TypeScript app at app.favepage.com: dashboard, FavePage moderation and a step-by-step page editor, users, posts, tags and categories, waitlist and beta signups, inquiries, promotions and push notifications. Every API response is validated with Zod at the boundary.

Marketing Site & SEO Directory

New Next.js 16 site for favepage.com, server-rendered so every page is indexable: home, businesses, about and updates, plus a public Browse FavePages directory of more than 10,000 recommended places, each with its own page.

Infrastructure & Handover

Moved the repositories into the client's own GitHub organization, documented the Azure deployment map (API on Azure Container Apps, ArangoDB on Azure VMs, media in Azure Blob Storage), and deployed both new web apps on Vercel.

// Technologies used