Overview
Students join communities for their field of study (Computer Science, Business, Engineering, Biology), then post questions, internship experiences, events and professor ratings. Other students can comment, upvote or downvote, and save posts. Each user has a profile with their major, links and registered courses.
My role
I helped shape the original idea, designed the Figma prototypes, set up the GitHub repo and the Django backend, and built the initial page templates. My partner, Isai, built the quote-of-the-day API integration and the profile page, and reviewed code through pull requests. We shared the deliverables, documentation and database work.
Highlights
- 8 data models and 22 routes, using Django's ORM and built-in authentication with hashed passwords
- Voting, saving and deleting update instantly through AJAX, with CSRF protection
- A "Hot" feed ranking that balances votes against post age, so newer posts can rise
- The quote API is cached for 24 hours and has a fallback, so the page never breaks if the API is down
How we worked
User stories, four one-week sprints, milestone submissions, and pull-request reviews before merging.
Challenge
I'd mostly built backends with Node and Express before this, so Django was new to me. I learned it quickly enough to set up our backend: the models, routes and templates. Two people working in one codebase was its own challenge, so we reviewed each other's pull requests before merging, which kept our changes from colliding.
What's next
Finish the planned to-do feature and deploy the app so anyone can try it.