PrideShow

💡 Inspiration

Many LGBTQIA+ individuals have grown isolated over the course of the pandemic. They gradually become more downtrodden due to the lack of socialization. While social media can help alleviate this loneliness, it can be hard for LGBTQIA+ youth to find other homosexual people that they can relate to.

💻 What it does

PrideShow is a social media network in which LGBTQIA+ individuals can share posts about a topic of their choice. They can post about themselves to introduce themselves to the wider community or they can raise awareness on issues or topics they want other LGBTQIA+ people to check out. Users can find posts by searching keywords or tags.

🛠 How I built it

I used MongoDB, ExpressJS, React, NodeJS, CSS, and HTML to create this project.

🛑 Challenges I ran into

My greatest challenge was using the various libraries and tools utilized by this project. I didn't have any experience dealing with the MERN stack so it took a bit of messing around before I could properly implement them into the project. One of the hardest parts was understanding and designing every component of the React code, and implementing the correct modules necessary for them to work correctly. I also ran into a lot of challenges while building the search feature. However, I'm happy that I was able to overcome these challenges in such a short amount of time to create an amazing product.

✅ Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm particularly proud of the ingenuity of my idea and how my app improves mental health, something that is vital to one's well-being and success. While there have been many social media apps created, PrideShow distinguishes itself by focusing on connecting members of the LGBTQIA+ community. By making an all-inclusive app that can really make a difference in the lives of people, I am extremely proud to say that I persisted through a lot of difficult technologies and learning curves of languages and integration to build a fully-functional app.

📚 What I learned

Through this project, I vastly improved my capabilities with React. Additionally, I learned more about the process of creating a web application. Going through the task of developing this app, I was also introduced to the various difficulties of sending data between the frontend and the backend.