Hi Community!
The Blackbaud Community hosts a quarterly Partner Spotlight Series webinar featuring partner solutions in 10-13 minute speed demos. The Spotlight Series is a valuable way for our members to discover and learn more about these partner solutions.
As the catalog of sessions grew, so did the need for a more intentional, scalable way to surface that content after the live events.
Instead of letting recordings live in disconnected posts or external libraries, I set out to create a centralized video repository within the community itself—one that felt cohesive and easy to maintain.
To do this, I built the Partner Spotlight Series page entirely from scratch using Vanilla’s custom pages functionality. Starting with a blank canvas gave me full control over layout. I was able to design the page with how members consume this type of content in mind.
One of the most impactful tools in this project was Vanilla’s new rich text editor. Using the editor’s flexible content blocks, I linked the video URLs hosted externally in Wistia while keeping the viewing experience seamless within the community page itself. This made it possible to leverage Wistia for video hosting and analytics, while still presenting the content natively to members. From a community perspective, this is a powerful reminder that you don’t have to choose between external tools and an integrated community experience—you can thoughtfully combine both.
I also used the same rich text editor blocks to add supporting resources beneath each webinar, including a call to action linked to an interest form and bulleted links to the Partners’ Blackbaud Marketplace listings.
This approach also ensured the page could evolve over time as new webinars are added, without requiring structural changes or additional development support.
This project reinforced an important principle: your community platform can be more than a place to host discussions—it can be a destination for curated, evergreen content. By combining custom pages with Vanilla’s widgets, it’s possible to turn one-time events into long term resources that continue to deliver value.
