Previous updates: First Post & Back End / User Authentication & Restructure Code
I finally have a fully functioning site! I haven’t deployed the code to Heroku yet (I need to add/update my integration tests), but I’ve been testing it locally and it now has a fully functioning feature set.
That said, it’s still super rough, and feels much more like a student project than I was hoping it would. A lot of it will just require some time to smooth out the user experience (I’m using alerts to prompt the user for input in the course creation screen right now >.<), but in the interest of time I’m going to try turning the project in as is after I fix my tests and deploy it.
The two pull requests attached to this update were mainly about connecting my front end site to the back end and making sure everything works properly. I had to update and add several end points to get everything to work as intended.
Project Summary
I’m creating a site where anyone can create and enroll in courses for free. It will not require registration to view any of the courses, but an account will allow users to track their progress.
The first phase of the project will be built with HTML/CSS/JavaScript/jQuery/Node/Mongo and handed in as my second capstone project with Thinkful. After I finish the web development program in a few months, my plan is to completely rebuild the front end in React and then connect it to the Steem blockchain. Here is a video I made on DTube that explains my larger plans. The three main components are (the first iteration will only contain the first component):
- a site to create and enroll in courses
- a community for each course that is either a forum or Stack Overflow style question and answer section
- a marketplace where students can find tutors for help with courses through video chat
Create Course
This pull request added the functionality to create courses and update them on the database.
Enroll
This pull request added the ability to enroll in courses and track progress.
Next
The main thing to do before handing this project in is to update all of my tests and make sure they pass, before deploying the site to Heroku. I also need to make sure responsive design is working properly and iron out any style issues by testing the site on various devices/browsers.
Feedback / Contributions
I’m currently in the process of learning web development full-time, so I’m very open to absolutely any suggestions or advice about my code. Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on Github.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors