A whole rescue operation
on one site.
Rescue Network is a foster-based dog and cat rescue in Buffalo, Minnesota, a 501(c)(3) that places animals through foster homes across the Upper Midwest. We built the full site: a page for every adoptable animal, fed from Shelterluv’s API, Stripe donation checkout, an online merch store, foster and volunteer intake, events, resources, and an AI FAQ assistant.
The brief
Rescue Network does several jobs at once. It moves animals into adoptive homes, recruits fosters and volunteers, takes donations and merch orders, runs events, and answers the same pet-care questions over and over. All of that had to live on one site without burying any of it, and the animal listings had to keep changing as dogs and cats come in and go home.
What we built
We built the homepage around six numbered entry points, one per audience: Adopt, Get Involved, Ways to Support, Who We Are, Events, and Resources. Each opens into its own section. Adoptable dogs and cats browse separately and every animal gets a detail page. Giving is split across one-time Stripe checkout, monthly giving, fundraisers, employer matching, merchandise, and wishlists. An assistant widget answers from the site content.
- Adoptable animals from Shelterluv: connected through Shelterluv’s API rather than its embed, with dog and cat browsing, a page per animal on rescuenetworkmn.org, and a homepage count of how many are waiting in foster homes right now
- Stripe donation checkout: one-time giving alongside monthly giving, fundraisers, and employer matching, each on its own page
- Merch store and wishlists: an online shop under Rescue Goods, plus Amazon and Chewy wishlist pages for supply donations
- Foster and volunteer intake: Foster, Volunteer, and Careers pages grouped under Get Involved, with Foster to Adopt sitting under Adopt
- Events: an events section with a featured event block on the homepage linking out to registration on RunSignup
- AI FAQ assistant: a chat widget, the Rescue Network Assistant, answering from rescuenetworkmn.org content
Every page is custom-coded and served from Cloudflare's edge, with no WordPress and no plugins to patch. We host it and look after it, and changes are one email away, on a care plan or the hand-off plan. See what a build costs or the rest of the portfolio.
Shelterluv, through
the API.
Rescue Network keeps its animals in Shelterluv, the adoption software many rescues use. Shelterluv’s standard way onto a website is an embed: a frame that runs its app inside your page. We connected rescuenetworkmn.org through Shelterluv’s API instead, so the animals live on Rescue Network’s own site.
- A page per animal at rescuenetworkmn.org/animal/…, with photos, story, fee, video where there is one, traits, foster status, and an Apply button that opens their Shelterluv application
- Browse pages people search for: dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, small dogs and seniors, plus New Arrivals and Longest Waiting
- Partner store pages showing the cats on view at each PetSmart and Chuck & Don’s location
- Built for search and sharing: every animal page carries its own title, description, share photo and structured data, and an animal sitemap with photos tells Google when animals come and go
- Always current: visitors’ browsers read Shelterluv’s live data, and a scheduled job refreshes the server’s copy every few minutes so share previews and the sitemap keep up. If Shelterluv is slow, the site falls back to the last good copy
- Adopted animals handled cleanly: an old link answers with a proper not-found that search engines drop, and points visitors to the animals still waiting
Staff never touch the website for any of it. They update Shelterluv, and the site follows. Here is how a Shelterluv API connection compares with the embed.
The adoptable dogs page: every card opens that dog’s own page, sorted with the dogs who have waited longest first.
Worth a closer look
Six ways in
The homepage opens with six numbered entry points, one for each thing a visitor might have come to do.
Giving, split by intent
One-time Stripe checkout, monthly giving, fundraisers, employer matching, merchandise, and wishlists each get their own page and their own pitch.
Answers without an email
A resource library and an assistant widget cover the common questions, from vet care and lost pets to the 3-3-3 rule.
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