What inspired me:

The prize category of the "Best Hack for Social Good" was what I went for off the bat since we're in a time of great turmoil where people need to be reminded that there is a lot of good in this world. I have heard a lot about apps that provide a donation platform and people sending cards to social workers to show appreciation so I thought I could create a place where all of that comes together in a safe environment.

What I learned:

I learned a lot more about how to use MongoDB which I have not really experimented with before. I definitely improved my JS skills because client and serverside programming was completely Vanilla JS. I also found something called MustardUI which is a very simplistic CSS package which I love using now.

How I Built It:

I made a fullstack application using HTML, CSS, JS, and MongoDB. I first setup the client UI, the form and setup the page for listing all posts. Then I setup the MongoDB server, added GET and POST routes. Then I added CORS, a Profanity Filter, and a request limiter. I then used FETCH and listed all of the messages on the home page. I spent a lot of time trying to understand how to deploy my project onto MongoDB Atlas and Heroku/Vercel but I could not get that to work in the end.

Challenges I Faced:

At the end of the project, I wanted to deploy it very badly. I tried many methods, using Vercel's tools, Heroku's MongoDB Addon, but I just couldn't get it to work in time. I accepted my defeat and just demoed the application on my localhost.

For the Future:

I like this website idea a lot and am already working on extensions for it. This includes a NLP for sentiment analysis so that I can grasp whether a user is genuine in their message or not, deployment to MongoDB Atlas of course, a sorter for all the posts, and many UI changes to Brighten even more pleasing to look at.

Built With

• css
• html
• javascript