Inspiration
Our inspiration was the lack of online diary apps that exist. Our website is an easy to use and easy to navigate webpage that allows users to have their own personal diary online for free.
What it does
It saves users profiles and lets them create diary entries and review previous diary entries. Notably, each diary submission is assisted by a number of template questions, such as having the user enter how stressful their day was on a scale of 1-10, as well as a freeform text field for any custom entries by the user. Each diary entry is stored in a database and users can look back at their past diary entries. Additionally, it gives the user a fun graphical interface to see how they felt over the past 14 days by displaying a table with a emoji for each day depending on how they responded to the "rate your feelings" question in each of their diary entires.
How we built it
We used HTML websites with CSS for details and formatting, and PHP to save and retrieve data from MYSQL. Our infrastructure backend was created using XAMPP to host the Apache webserver and the MYSQL server.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into many problems coding seeing as most of the code used was either learned this semester in college or was learned from coding websites to help learn how to use CSS and PHP with in HTML. We successfully constructed user and diary entry databases and stored data in them, however we could not finalize the retrieval of data from the MYSQL server and displaying it on the webpage in the time allotted. Additionally, we did not have time to enact various security measures on our website, such as form and SQL validation.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that, for the most part, the website works and that within 8 hours, we were able to create a webpage with multiple sites and data being saved and returned. The webpage's design is also easy to use and colorful. We are also proud that we made a website that can help other internet users.
What we learned
We learned how to use more advance features of HTML, such as format, label, and input. Additionally, we learned how to use more CSS style features to center text, change the background color and text font, and adjusting tables to fit the whole screen. With PHP and MYSQL we learned how to store data for use as a website's backend infrastructure, such as usernames, passwords, data from questions, and how to return such data.
What's next for Your Personal Diary
We plan on making sure that users are able to get their data back on view submissions page, as well as making the webpage, mainly the about page, look more inviting. We also want to create more ways for users to sort their previous data so that they are able to search for it how they want, for more ease of use. We also plan to add additional security measures, such as preventing SQL injections by using form validation. We are also open to adjusting the diary template questions based on user feedback.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.