palisadoes
Administrator
Introduction
Some of you may be having questions about GSoC 2026.
We will be applying, and if selected, we’ll have hybrid/custom projects of varying sizes to help stimulate new directions for the apps.
Background on Talawa
Talawa was originally created as a university internship project to get students interested in coding through Palisadoes Foundation internships.
We wanted to fulfill an easily identifiable need in a niche that had:
We selected church management software as it met these needs, HOWEVER, we wanted to make Talawa more generic for general community based organizations across a wide variety of cultures. This is why we have been insistent on multi-lingual support and removed all religious references to make it generically applicable across the globe.
Next Steps - GSoC 2026 Prerequisities
There are many cleanup challenges that we need to complete prior to the GSoC announcements in April. Here is a summary of what needs to be done.
Web App Refactoring
There are some refactoring template issues on the front end that need addressing.
There are many other areas that could be refactored. If you can identify meaningful areas for refactoring that are compliant with our reusable components guidelines below, then feel free to create them.
Docker
We need to have the option of docker running in rootless mode for both development and production environments as end users may install the app in virtual machines shared with other applications. We have issues created for this, but there may be other areas for improvement that could be useful.
API <--> Admin Communication Gaps
When we setup test.talawa.io earlier this year, we discovered many shortcomings that were identified in this document.
The related issues in the API and Admin are all labeled “MVP”. The document also provides insights into future directions for secure communications that could be satisfied by the creation of issues.
New Features
We encourage you to consider ways to add new features and/or improved UI/UX workflows to the apps as new ideas to work on. For example, both the the tags and campaigns workflows could be made more intuitive. Here are some videos that could inspire creativity. Remember these are guides and though the videos focus on BreezeCHM, you should use them as general inspiration.
Remember: Talawa is aimed at being a generic product, not specifically for religious usage.
This video gives you an idea of the technological abilities of the expected typical users of volunteer membership apps and why documentation and easy UI/UX design is so important. In the video a pastor is addressing his church to explain to them how to use the app. If Talawa is hard to use, we will have no traction and therefore this video is very insightful.
Families
The API has a family member feature that has never been implemented in the Admin UI.
Implementing a intuitive interface for this will require this issue to be completed first as it will make the work easier.
Remember any new or updated screens will need to follow our reusable components guidelines.
Mobile App
Talawa was originally created as a MERN stack application to help introduce NoSQL concepts to the initial batch of students. This created a huge series of difficulties because we were constantly having errors that could have been easily solved with an RDBMS. Two years ago we migrated the API to PostgresSQL and spent most of 2024 / 2025 migrating all the client apps to use the new technology.
As part of the migration we decided to disable many of the mobile app features and reintroduce them slowly. The features need to be re-enabled and you could create issues to restore the features to the app along with the required tests.
We added a feature in 2025 that also made the mobile app less attractive. Due to a misunderstanding, the mobile app was configured to work only with an instance running on localhost. This made it difficult for developers to validate the mobile app against our hosted API instances or those of anyone else.
This issue was expected to fix this, and needs to be completed ASAP.
If you look at the code for Talawa 12 months ago, you will have a better understanding of the code for this feature that was removed and needs to be restored.
ReCaptcha
ReCaptcha based login used to be an optional feature of Talawa Admin that never properly worked. It would be good to see how it could be re-enabled reliably with thorough testing. Here is a list of issues that show the history of the past very buggy implementation.
The feature will need to be adequately documented, and the UI/UX screen for using it will need to be identified. It will also be counter productive to add this feature before the PR for this issue is merged.
Talawa Cloud
People often ask about Talawa as a cloud service. This could be an option and new issues could consider scalability as a feature.
Remember that The Palisadoes Foundation is a non-profit of limited resources and will not be able to pay for any third party services used by communities using the app. Therefore any features using third parties need to be fully configurable by the end user.
Any new mobile app features will need to take this into consideration.
Conclusion
You may feel that there are few issues to work on, but that doesn't mean that there are no opportunities to create some that will have a meaningful impact on the Talawa application suite.
Some of you may be having questions about GSoC 2026.
We will be applying, and if selected, we’ll have hybrid/custom projects of varying sizes to help stimulate new directions for the apps.
Background on Talawa
Talawa was originally created as a university internship project to get students interested in coding through Palisadoes Foundation internships.
We wanted to fulfill an easily identifiable need in a niche that had:
- Few options
- Easy to find videos on how to use similar software for inspiration
- The potential to attract developers who would want to use it in their own communities.
We selected church management software as it met these needs, HOWEVER, we wanted to make Talawa more generic for general community based organizations across a wide variety of cultures. This is why we have been insistent on multi-lingual support and removed all religious references to make it generically applicable across the globe.
Next Steps - GSoC 2026 Prerequisities
There are many cleanup challenges that we need to complete prior to the GSoC announcements in April. Here is a summary of what needs to be done.
Web App Refactoring
There are some refactoring template issues on the front end that need addressing.
There are many other areas that could be refactored. If you can identify meaningful areas for refactoring that are compliant with our reusable components guidelines below, then feel free to create them.
pen label:refactorDocker
We need to have the option of docker running in rootless mode for both development and production environments as end users may install the app in virtual machines shared with other applications. We have issues created for this, but there may be other areas for improvement that could be useful.
API <--> Admin Communication Gaps
When we setup test.talawa.io earlier this year, we discovered many shortcomings that were identified in this document.
The related issues in the API and Admin are all labeled “MVP”. The document also provides insights into future directions for secure communications that could be satisfied by the creation of issues.
New Features
We encourage you to consider ways to add new features and/or improved UI/UX workflows to the apps as new ideas to work on. For example, both the the tags and campaigns workflows could be made more intuitive. Here are some videos that could inspire creativity. Remember these are guides and though the videos focus on BreezeCHM, you should use them as general inspiration.
Remember: Talawa is aimed at being a generic product, not specifically for religious usage.
This video gives you an idea of the technological abilities of the expected typical users of volunteer membership apps and why documentation and easy UI/UX design is so important. In the video a pastor is addressing his church to explain to them how to use the app. If Talawa is hard to use, we will have no traction and therefore this video is very insightful.
Families
The API has a family member feature that has never been implemented in the Admin UI.
Implementing a intuitive interface for this will require this issue to be completed first as it will make the work easier.
Remember any new or updated screens will need to follow our reusable components guidelines.
Mobile App
Talawa was originally created as a MERN stack application to help introduce NoSQL concepts to the initial batch of students. This created a huge series of difficulties because we were constantly having errors that could have been easily solved with an RDBMS. Two years ago we migrated the API to PostgresSQL and spent most of 2024 / 2025 migrating all the client apps to use the new technology.
As part of the migration we decided to disable many of the mobile app features and reintroduce them slowly. The features need to be re-enabled and you could create issues to restore the features to the app along with the required tests.
We added a feature in 2025 that also made the mobile app less attractive. Due to a misunderstanding, the mobile app was configured to work only with an instance running on localhost. This made it difficult for developers to validate the mobile app against our hosted API instances or those of anyone else.
This issue was expected to fix this, and needs to be completed ASAP.
If you look at the code for Talawa 12 months ago, you will have a better understanding of the code for this feature that was removed and needs to be restored.
ReCaptcha
ReCaptcha based login used to be an optional feature of Talawa Admin that never properly worked. It would be good to see how it could be re-enabled reliably with thorough testing. Here is a list of issues that show the history of the past very buggy implementation.
The feature will need to be adequately documented, and the UI/UX screen for using it will need to be identified. It will also be counter productive to add this feature before the PR for this issue is merged.
Talawa Cloud
People often ask about Talawa as a cloud service. This could be an option and new issues could consider scalability as a feature.
Remember that The Palisadoes Foundation is a non-profit of limited resources and will not be able to pay for any third party services used by communities using the app. Therefore any features using third parties need to be fully configurable by the end user.
Any new mobile app features will need to take this into consideration.
Conclusion
You may feel that there are few issues to work on, but that doesn't mean that there are no opportunities to create some that will have a meaningful impact on the Talawa application suite.
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