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Website index
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Setting up the widget
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Example Widget
Inspiration
We thought about what types of services that we could improve. We eventually landed on LinkedIn, and thought it was too heavy for something that should do one primary purpose: connect working professionals together. Professional social networking should be a minimal service that connects people's resume to that of their colleagues. Linkr intends to do exactly that.
What it does
Linkr is mostly a widget that a user can put into their website that connects two people together through our service. A user creates an account on our app, putting in their information. They can then copy&paste a generated snippet of code that they can put into their own websites. This snippet of code will then allow a visitor to directionally connect to a personal website with the owner of the website.
How we built it
We created a Flask server in Python to host our web app. The front end was built with HTML, CSS (we used the Bootstrap framework), and JavaScript (jQuery). We used Heroku to host our web app. We also used a DataStax database to hold our information and login credentials.
Challenges we ran into
Learning the NoSQL paradigm for Datastax took longer than intended. We ended up using their restful api which took more trial and error than desired. Additionally, there was some issues with our own APIs that we had created (they were endpoints in our web app, generally hidden from the user) and the transfer of data between three different places (DataStax, Flask server, JavaScript front end). Managing CORS was a pain, but we finally got all of the permissions working correctly in flask so users can use our widget.
What we learned
NoSQL (cassandra), flask, widget creation, cross-sight scripting.
What's next for Linkr
We believe Linkr would work best being decentralized. Allowing multiple instances to connect together would be ideal. Also, allowing users to sign up to receive regular emails telling them which of their connections updated their websites. This would allow the "social media" part of professional connections to operate in a minimal way. In an ideal world, nobody will need to visit our website after generating their widget.
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