Labhood

Labhood is a social platform designed exclusively for developers and techies, providing a space for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and networking within the GitLab developer community.

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Inspiration

Being a programmer for more than six years now. I have explored most social hubs for developers and techies and I can't seem to find the Inclusivity, diversity, or equality that developers and other techies need. I mean developers have grown to a stage in the world where our portfolio mixed with social life and engagements is becoming a priority. I mean popular developers have more access to jobs than those who do not by far. We need a lot of interaction in general. We need an end to "Programmers do not have life" quotes constantly ringing in my ear.

I have found myself working on a complex project, hitting a dead end, and feeling very bad and alone in the struggle. I spend countless hours battling lines of code and troubleshooting elusive bugs. It can be isolating even when surrounded by fellow coders.

As regards the fact that development and tech are becoming mainstream, we need a social media hub designed specifically for techies. This helps to build the skills, network, and reputation of each developer using the platform and the fact that it is backed up by Gitlab in a lot of processes brings a lot of value and traffic to GitLab itself.

While existing platforms like stack overflow are phenomenal for Gitlab comments and threads, Twitter, LinkedIn, discord, slack, etc are good for social interaction, they still lack space for casual interaction, brainstorming, project launch and demo, networking, personalized feeds which ensures career growth, inclusivity, and adequate stress management functions.

I have also benefited firsthand from my network which has provided more opportunities for me in my career and reputation and I feel other people(especially Gitlab users) can also benefit from this.

A quick glance at the project brief is a lot of inspiration in itself🚀💪.

What it does

The purpose of Labsocial is to create a vibrant, inclusive, and interactive ecosystem for developers, fostering collaboration on projects, skill enhancement, Healthier living, stress management, and career growth among GitLab users. One of the main purposes of this project is to create a great social impact on GitLab users if adopted.

Target Audience:

Labsocial is created for developers, programmers, and tech enthusiasts who seek a dedicated platform to connect, collaborate, and showcase their expertise on the GitLab platform.

Objectives and Goals of the project

  • Facilitate seamless collaboration among developers using GitLab.
  • Provide a space for showcasing skills, projects, and achievements.
  • Foster a sense of community and networking within the developer ecosystem, especially with the perks given by GitLab.
  • Allows developers and other techies to grow their skills, network and reputation and these qualities form the basis of career growth
  • Allow for inclusion of blogs, product marketplace, streaks, contests, forums, and events into the GitLab ecosystem of techies.

How we built it

This is a solo project built by Henry Fasakin and it was a project that followed all the ideation and development cycles.

  • I started by recognizing this big problem at hand. I also took into consideration Gitlab's attempt to mitigate the effects of this problem.
  • I generated a project brief and compiled it in an inline document. This gives a clear sense of the features of the project and what the project is set to achieve in the future.
  • I also designed and made prototypes of the project using Figma and Gitlab workflow tools like issues and project management cards. figma link
  • I proceeded to build the web app using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MYSQL.

Technology stacks

Frontend:

  • HTML, CSS, and Javascript for a responsive and dynamic user interface. We may use Vite for setup and all.

Backend:

  • PHP

Database:

  • MYSQL

Version Control:

  • Git for version control, integrated with GitLab.

Testing and deployment:

Jest and vercel respectively

Challenges we ran into

  • Lack of team members who shared the same goal of the project
  • Technical problems and bugs that involved debugging and rubber-ducking for days.

Considerations

  • Prioritize user experience to encourage active participation.
  • Regular testing to identify and resolve potential bugs.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Authenticating using GitLab's API
  • Allow tagging of Gitlab project in the social platform
  • Fetching GitLab stars and allowing users to comment on a particular project
  • Adding insights into the everyday life of the developers through status updates
  • Implementing Job boards

Milestones and Timeline

  1. Project Setup (Week 1):
  • Environment setup, technology stack selection, and initial database configuration.
  1. User Authentication and Profile Management (Week 1):
  • Implement user registration, login, and profile customization.
  1. Social Feed and Collaboration Tools (Week 2):
  • Develop newsfeed functionality and project collaboration features.
  1. Events, Skill Endorsements, and Job Board (Week 3):
  • Integrate events, skill endorsements, and job board functionalities.
  1. Notifications and Testing (Week 4):
  • Implement real-time notifications and conduct thorough testing.

  1. Final Polish and Submission (Week 5):

    • Address any remaining issues, optimize performance, and prepare for submission.

  2. Introduction of labsocial points (Week 5):

These points accumulate over time of usage or activity on the platform and can be used for purchases sponsored by Gitlab. This will increase the usage of GitLab and our web app.

What we learned

  • I learned to ship a product's MVP within a limited time and also learned a lot of concepts in PHP and MYSQL.

Navigation and core functions

  • Posts
  • Tools sections
  • Forums and Discussion
  • Hackathon and Quizzes
  • Collaboration (More like real-time coding with meetings incorporated)
  • Events
  • Blogs
  • Polls
  • Profile (very important: Achievements, streaks, contributing stats, and all loaded from the GitLab account. API Usage🤦‍♀️)
  • Notification

What's next for Labhood

Shipping version two after seeing the live performance of the product and accepting feedback. Also inclusion of AI is next on the checklist 🚀👍

We would also aim to add features that improve Inclusivity, diversity, equality, Healthier living, stress management, and career growth better than we have implemented.

For some reasons, I could not host the dynamic site on GitLab :(

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