Know Sylhet

Inspiration

Sylhet is a North-Eastern district in Bangladesh, and my hometown. Growing up in Sylhet, I realized I knew little about the exact locations of many renowned places in our region. This made me wonder about the challenges faced by both locals and visitors in navigating our beautiful city and its surroundings. Without easily accessible information, how would anyone plan their travels effectively or discover hidden gems? This realization highlighted the need for a centralized source of information about Sylhet's attractions, their locations, and how to reach them - a need that inspired the creation of this platform.

What it does

Know Sylhet is comprehensive website that serves as a digital hub for accessing and sharing information about this beautiful region of Bangladesh. Our user-friendly interface allows visitors to explore a wide range of topics including tourism, culture, history, education, and current events in Sylhet. What makes our platform unique is its collaborative nature - we encourage users to contribute their knowledge, experiences, and insights, creating a dynamic and ever-growing resource. Whether you're a local resident, a curious traveler, or a researcher, our website offers a wealth of information about Sylhet's attractions, challenges, and opportunities.

How we built it

We created the frontend of the website with ReactJS, connecting it with backend made with NodeJS, using MongoDB as its Database.

Challenges we ran into

Every bit of it was a challange since we started the hackathon with only learning HTML, CSS, JS and basic React. But most challanging one was:

Making the website dynamic: Halfway through the project we realized user interaction requires Backend programming, and we have to learn NodeJS in order to engage the users.
Deploying Backend: Deploying backend server required the most effort since there are not many platform where we can deploy backend without charge and without sharing credit card information. Learning how to deploy it was another hassle.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We started almost from zero with no prior experience of building a dynamic website (or knowing what it meant) and even no experience in performing on hackathons. We are proud that we learned quite a lot quite fast through this hackathon.

What we learned

Using React on a bigger scale
Creating and deploying backend of a website and connecting it to the database
Video editing while making the presentation

What's next for Know Sylhet

I have plans to make Know Sylhet an independent social platform like Facebook, but on a local scale. Users will have their personal profiled set up on Know Sylhet and can connect with other Users. They can share their experience on a much bigger scale earning 'Contribution'. Higher contribution will move them up in the leaderboard and give them 'Key to the City' award.