fBay | Devpost

FBay if an online store that is a rip-off of eBay, but with gag gifts as products instead of real merchandise.
We had a disadvantage from the beginning, since one of our teammates was unable to download anything on their computer, so what we could do for this project was severely limited. So, basically we had the choice between a website and an app. Since our group wasn’t very experienced in app-making, we ended up choosing something that would give us more creative freedom, since we wouldn’t take so much time figuring out the logistics - a website.
The original idea for fBay came when one of our teammates suggested that we make an online store for gag gifts. As we were trying to zone in on how we could integrate that idea into out project, the idea of eBay came up, and we decided to make our website a rip-off of theirs to add another layer of humor.
This project doesn’t really have any big societal ideas, or world changing philosophies. It was meant as a gag website that we could enjoy making, and people could enjoy viewing it. Our entire teamed believed that the format of an online store would be one of the best ways to flex our coding skills, especially because our entire group (accumulated) was fluent in HTML, CSS, and different forms of JavaScript/Java. The included factor of it being an online store for gag gifts allowed us to continue to have fun throughout the process of making it, and to stay engaged and interested.
We built this project using HTML, CSS, and Javascript for the main part, as well as node.js for the backend servers.

Our team also made a database to hold product information, as well as user information so we could make the product pages and account info pages easier to code, and to access as a client. A few of the challenges we ran into while constructing this project included, for starters, the inability to download any software to make our project. We also didn’t have any hardware to do a deeply complex project. Since we couldn’t download anything, we had to research to find live coding workspaces, and we went through quite a few. We were constantly running into issues with each program, from it not being live, to it adding, moving, or all together deleting our code. One of our major accomplishments is how we each weren’t super familiar with languages others in our team spoke, but we were able to work together, and even learn a little bit of a new coding language. Backend deployment was also new to us, but we ended with a better knowledge of the subject. We are also very excited about the amount of food we were able to consume over the last 24 hours! The snacks were great, and meal times were extremely fun, and were a great time to refuel and just talk. We would love to move our website to a more permanent host; the current host we have is inconsistent and will shut down after not being active for a little. However, for it being a free service on a browser, it worked extremely well (when we finally found it!) and we are very grateful to have discovered it. While building this project, we learned to better work as a team, and to trust each other with different tasks that we couldn’t necessarily complete, due to a hole in our knowledge of coding. The workshops also provided us time to get out of our comfort zones, and to learn new skills from people who are in an actual IT program in college.