ClothesShare

The home page for ClothesShare
More information located when scrolling down on the home page
The about us page for ClothesShare
More information located when scrolling down on the about us page
Article page where users can find and upload articles

Inspiration

While reviewing the SDGs, the ones that really resonated with us were the No Poverty and the Good Health and Well Being goals. We wanted to be able to make an impact on our local communities before branching out to more global impacts. A great way we thought we could do this was by creating a website to improve a current solution to a problem in our communities. Through some brainstorming we came up with a product that would help people and families in need to better find clothing suitable for them through a donation website. Contrary to traditional clothing donation organizations, our website provides recipients with free clothes that they can select, ensuring that the clothing items will suit their needs. ClothesShare’s localized nature also ensures that bundles of donated clothes aren’t simply shipped overseas to poorer countries, where they often end up putting local clothing manufacturers and textile industries out of business.

What it does

ClothesShare connects clothes donors with people who need clothes. Through our website, people that are in need can easily find clothes that suit their needs by looking through a variety of posts. Once they find one that they like, they can click the contact button to get in touch with the donors. Donors are also easily able to donate their clothes. By taking a picture and uploading a description, they can offer their gently used or even new clothing to those that need it most.

How we built it

We used HTML, CSS and some Javascript for the front end development and PHP for the back end. For the website design, we used HTML and CSS to stylize the website and make it easy to interact with. By using Bootstrap, we were able to make the HTML and CSS work on various laptop sizes. To store and upload the clothing articles, we needed a database. To do this we used MySQL and PHP. To do most of the front end coding, we used repl.it multiplayer so we were able to work on it collaboratively and in real-time. Through communication and teamwork, we were able to pull off a pretty cool project in the end.

Challenges we ran into

As programmers that weren’t completely familiar with PHP and MySQL, a lot of the struggles we went through were related to creating a functioning database based on user input and then using the information that was stored in the database on other pages. Only one of our team members had a little experience with it and already had MySQL downloaded on her computer. Although it was hard for us to incorporate something that we didn’t have much experience with, by learning through videos and supporting her, we were able to get it mostly working.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re really proud of the website design. By incorporating elements such as parallax and easy-to-use buttons, we feel that the design greatly improves the user experience by creating a welcoming atmosphere and allowing for convenient use. We’re also really proud of all we did for the database as that was one of the challenges for us. By overcoming our challenges, we were able to not only learn something new but be proud of how it all came together.

What we learned

Not only did we learn more about databases, we learned the importance of communication and teamwork. For a project to be successful in such a short period of time, it was important to divide up the work and ensure that different parts of the website got done accordingly. By communicating with each other about which parts were complete and which parts still needed work, as well as helping each other out, we were able to support each other to complete our project on schedule.

What's next for ClothesShare

Currently, ClothesShare enables receivers to look for the clothes that they want by scrolling through the articles page. In the future, we plan to modify this experience with an algorithm that filters through all the submissions and presents the receiver with the clothes that would best suit them based on the information they provide. By making it easier for the recipients to match with donors, the website’s functionality will become a lot more seamless and much easier to use. Through this, we hope to expand ClothesShare not only to the rest of Canada but also to the rest of the world.