Nuggets of Positivity

Share quick, uplifting statements to help brighten a stranger's day!

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Inspiration

I was inspired to make Nuggets of Positivity due to the rise in depression and anxiety over the last few decades. While a smile and a few positive words may not solve our problems nor tackle the √(our problems), it may brighten our days just a smidge, and make a difference (however small) for the better. :)

What it does

Nuggets of Positivity allows for users to enter their name and nugget, a simple yet inspiring statement encouraging themselves and strangers! If the user is out of ideas, the website will automatically offer a nugget, hopefully bringing out a small smile or laugh. :)

Also, there's a not-so-secret 404 page. :)

How I built it

I built the website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The navbar links to each HTML page, with a little CSS to enhance the user experience. On the create page, the user has the opportunity to create their own nugget in an HTML form by inputting their name and statement in a TinyMCE text editor. :)

Challenges we ran into

I ran into a lot of challenges during this hackathon, and I'm honestly surprised I lived to tell the tale really glad I had the opportunity to experiment, because I learned so much! At first, I aimed to incorporate MongoDB, due to being introduced to it rather recently and wanting to test out what I learned. It was exciting to set up mongoose with an express app and creating clusters for each submitted nugget (very smooth user experience!). I then had the grand idea of incorporating Auth0 to allow users to edit and delete their previously created posts. This is where all my problems started, and everything sorta went downhill from there. :(

I was testing with localhost at first so when the callback for Auth0 wasn't working, I thought the solution would be to use a DNS. With GoDaddy, I created nuggetsofpositivity.us and tried to host my code on the server. Very interesting experience, also fun to see my website running on something other than localhost! Unfortunately, using CPanel cost money, and I had to scrap the idea. So I connected my domain name with GitHub Pages and decided to go from there. Unfortunately, things (somehow) got worse.

I realized that GitHub Pages didn't support server side programs, and I wouldn't be able to use node.js and express on it. With limited options, I decided to scrap the idea of node and MongoDB, instead turning to static HTML for my website. I had to convert all my EJS files to HTML and eventually put my website together to create the glorious nuggets! :)

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am very proud of testing so many different applications and options, even though I didn't go through with most of them (it was all still very fun!). I am also very proud of the outcome of my website because I only had a few hours left to finish it up and it turned out really nice. :)

What we learned

I learned that it's probably really important to think through my plans before proceeding with actual code. I had to scrap a ton of code after changing ideas, and it was very sad to see everything go unused. :(

I also learned that it's really important to test out different applications before starting out, to see what's compatible with each and to check what works best for my project! :)

And modulation! I learned that it's extremely important for keeping code organized. Partials in EJS were super nice when it came to the nav bar and tags. Also I learned about Model-View-Controller (MVC) and modulation on the server side with node, which was so interesting! My files were definitely more organized after implementing the design pattern. :)

What's next for Nuggets of Positivity

Definitely trying to host with Node.js! I saved my node.js code, so I'll definitely try to find another free way to host my site, thereby allowing me to finally add MongoDB and Auth0!

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