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Project Spotlight
I Didn't Build a Website on Wix. I Built a Social Network.
10/28/26, 12:43 PM
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Project Spotlight
I Didn't Build a Website on Wix. I Built a Social Network.
How I used Wix Velo, JavaScript, and custom CMS architecture to build Sxgram, a social media platform designed specifically for adults.
10/28/26, 12:43 PM
Most people think of Wix as a website builder. I wanted to find out just how far I could push it.
I'm Joseph Haecker, founder of Sxgram, an 18+ social networking platform designed to give adults, creators, influencers, businesses, and professionals a place to connect, publish, share, and build their brands. Unlike traditional creator subscription platforms, Sxgram is designed as a social network, with familiar features such as social feeds, profiles, posts, reels, messaging, notifications, and community engagement.
But Sxgram goes further. The platform incorporates SxM Magazine, an editorial publishing experience; SxRADIO, a podcast publishing and discovery system; an affiliate marketplace; product cards; verified account memberships; and tools that help members turn their online presence into professional opportunities.
What makes this project particularly interesting is that I built it on Wix. Using Velo, JavaScript, Wix CMS collections, custom backend logic, dynamic pages, and third-party integrations, I've developed a growing social platform within an ecosystem many people still associate primarily with small business websites.
Sxgram represents an experiment in what's possible when you stop asking what a website builder was designed to do and start asking what you can build with the tools it gives you.
Background
My background isn't traditional software engineering. I'm an entrepreneur, publisher, author, and former custom lighting designer who has spent much of my career developing businesses, brands, and creative experiences.
Through building digital publications such as Only Fans Insider Magazine and developing the AmpLever media ecosystem, I recognized a recurring problem: adult creators, businesses, and professionals often depend on social media platforms that don't fully accommodate their industries, language, or business models.
I wanted to create a different kind of social network. Not another subscription platform, but an environment where verified adults could connect, publish content, promote their businesses, share podcasts, participate in editorial opportunities, and develop professional relationships.
Rather than hire a traditional development agency to build an entirely custom application, I decided to see whether Wix could support the architecture I envisioned.
What began as a website evolved into a much more ambitious development project. As new requirements emerged, I used Wix Velo to develop custom functionality, connect CMS collections, create backend processes, and build features that extended far beyond standard website templates.
I wasn't hired to build Sxgram. I was the founder, the client, the product architect, and the person writing and implementing the code.
Problem
The challenge was twofold.
First, I wanted to address a gap in the social media market. Adults working in industries involving sexuality, wellness, relationships, entertainment, and creator businesses often encounter restrictive automated moderation systems, even when their content is educational, professional, or otherwise lawful.
I believed there should be a social networking platform specifically designed for verified adults, with clear community standards, age verification, and space for legitimate adult-oriented conversations and businesses.
Second, there was the technical challenge: How do you build an actual social networking platform using Wix?
A conventional website might need pages, forms, a blog, and a membership system. Sxgram needed considerably more: user-generated content, custom member profiles, social feeds, relationships between members, post interactions, notifications, media uploads, podcast episodes, editorial submissions, verification workflows, subscription tiers, and multiple interconnected databases.
These systems also needed to work together. A member's identity should connect their social activity, editorial presence, podcast content, and business opportunities.
The objective wasn't simply to make a website look like a social network. It was to create the underlying functionality of one.
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Solution
My solution was to use Wix as the foundation for a custom application.
Instead of relying exclusively on prebuilt Wix apps, I used Velo to create specialized workflows, custom JavaScript functionality, backend modules, and interconnected CMS collections.
Wix CMS became a central component of the architecture, storing and connecting the records that power member profiles, social posts, editorial articles, podcast channels, episodes, and other platform experiences.
Dynamic pages made it possible to create individual destinations for content, while Velo handled the logic behind publishing, navigation, user interactions, and relationships between different parts of the platform.
I also developed custom media workflows, including a photobooth experience where members can upload images, combine them with branded overlays, preview their creations, and publish them into the Sxgram ecosystem.
The result is a modular social networking platform that combines community engagement, editorial publishing, podcasting, professional discovery, and monetization-related tools within a single branded experience.
Most importantly, the architecture allows me to continue developing new features without rebuilding the entire platform each time a new idea emerges.
Key Factors
1. Building beyond traditional Wix functionality. Rather than treat Wix as a collection of templates and widgets, I approached it as an application-development environment. Velo allowed me to create custom JavaScript logic and backend functionality tailored to Sxgram's requirements.
2. Designing an interconnected CMS architecture. The platform uses multiple collections to support different content types and relationships. Social posts, magazine articles, member profiles, and podcast episodes are separate experiences, but they need to function as parts of one ecosystem.
3. Creating custom publishing workflows. Members can interact with specialized submission interfaces for social content, editorial articles, and other media. Custom Velo code handles data operations, media previews, associated member records, and navigation to published content.
4. Developing a social engagement experience. Custom functionality supports an algorithmic social feed, mentions, notifications, and member interactions, helping transform the site from a static publishing destination into an interactive community.
5. Connecting editorial publishing with social networking. SxM Magazine gives Sxgram an editorial layer alongside everyday social content. This allows the platform to combine fast-moving social engagement with longer-form storytelling and professional visibility.
6. Integrating podcast publishing. SxRADIO supports podcast channels, episode uploads, externally hosted episodes, and importing existing podcast RSS feeds. This gives podcasters a way to bring existing content into the Sxgram community.
7. Building custom image experiences. The Sx Filters Photobooth required careful coordination between image uploads, transparent graphic overlays, HTML rendering, image positioning, and publishing workflows. Small visual details, such as accurately aligning an uploaded photo within an off-center frame, required custom logic rather than default image placement.
8. Designing for verified adult participation. The platform distinguishes between free viewing accounts and verified publishing accounts. Verified membership tiers, identity requirements, reporting workflows, and moderation rules form part of the platform's operating model.
9. Working through technical obstacles. Developing a social network inside Wix has required troubleshooting dataset connections, CMS collection identifiers, dynamic page routing, media handling, frontend/backend communication, and site-wide functionality. Each challenge has helped refine the underlying architecture.
10. Maintaining founder-level control. By developing the platform myself, I've been able to experiment, improve workflows, and respond to product needs without depending on a separate development team for every feature.
Notable Features
One of the most interesting aspects of Sxgram is how many different experiences operate within the same Wix-based platform.
The social feed: Rather than a conventional blog or directory, Sxgram features a custom social publishing environment with posts, media, interactions, mentions, and notifications.
SxM Magazine: A built-in editorial experience that connects social networking with longer-form articles, creator visibility, and professional storytelling.
SxRADIO: A podcast publishing and discovery system that supports existing RSS feeds, direct episode uploads, and externally hosted podcast content.
Sx Filters Photobooth: A custom image experience that lets users place uploaded photos into branded frames and overlays, preview the composition, and publish the result.
Verified membership tiers: Different account types provide different levels of platform functionality, including verified publishing access.
Affiliate Program Marketplace: A discovery experience that allows members to explore external affiliate opportunities without Sxgram processing those transactions.
Custom content relationships: Articles, social content, and other records can be associated with member profiles, allowing different parts of the platform to remain connected.
What makes these features noteworthy isn't any single component. It's that they were developed to work together within a Wix-based ecosystem.
Product Spec
- Platform: Wix
- Development environment: Wix Velo
- Programming languages: JavaScript, HTML, CSS
- Database: Wix CMS / Wix Data
- Backend: Velo backend modules and web methods
- Member functionality: Wix Members, custom profile associations, verification-related workflows
- Content architecture: Multiple interconnected CMS collections
- Dynamic content: Dynamic article pages, social post pages, podcast episode pages
- Social networking: Custom social feed, posts, carousels, reels, mentions, notifications, member interactions
- Publishing: Custom article submission forms, media upload workflows, member-linked content records
- Editorial integration: SxM Magazine
- Podcast integration: SxRADIO, RSS feed import, episode uploads, externally hosted episode support
- Media functionality: Custom image preview, photobooth overlays, HTML component communication
- Membership monetization: Verified Creator, Influencer, and Business subscription tiers
- Commerce-related integrations: Stripe, PayPal, external affiliate and product links
- Referral integration: GoAffPro
- Community safeguards: Age/identity verification requirements, user reporting, moderation workflows
- Development time: To be confirmed
- Number of CMS collections: To be confirmed
- Number of custom Velo modules: To be confirmed
- Third-party APIs: Full inventory to be confirmed
Executive Summary
Sxgram began with a question: Could I build a real social networking platform using Wix?
The project has grown into an interconnected application combining social feeds, member profiles, media publishing, editorial content, podcast hosting and discovery, verified memberships, affiliate opportunities, and custom community features.
Through Wix Velo, JavaScript, backend modules, CMS collections, and dynamic pages, I've been able to create functionality that goes substantially beyond a conventional website.
The biggest lesson from this project isn't that Wix eliminates the complexity of building software. It doesn't. Building interconnected systems still requires architectural planning, debugging, data management, testing, and continual refinement.
The lesson is that Wix can provide the foundation for considerably more ambitious projects than many people imagine.
I didn't set out to prove that Wix could replace every custom development framework. I set out to build a platform that addressed a real business need, using the tools available to me.
And Sxgram is what I've built so far.
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