Community Sharing Platform

by Coast to Coast Crusaders, Team 2!

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. User Story
3. Product Analysis
4. Features
5. Key Technologies & Installations
6. Project Structure
7. Demo
8. Future Enhancements
9. Contributors

Overview

Welcome to the Community Sharing Platform, your personalized hub for borrowing, lending, and sharing items.Our platform aims to facilitate a vibrant sharing ecosystem, enabling members to connect, share resources, and thrive together. Sharing Opportunities

• Sporting Goods
• Camping Gear
• Children Items
• Games and Attractions
• So much more...

User Story

As a Member of a community, I wish to join a community sharing platform so that I may borrow, lend, and share with neighbors and peers. This will help me build a more connected and sustainable future.

Product Analysis

• Strength: Community building and resource optimization
• Weakness: Initial trust-building and competition
• Opportunities: Potential expansion and forming partnerships
• Threats: Privacy concerns and regulatory challenges

Features

• Connect: Connect with members of your community to borrow, lend, and share items.
• Share: Share resources and items within your community, fostering a spirit of cooperation and collaboration.
• Thrive: Contribute to a sustainable and supportive community environment where everyone benefits.
• Post and comment functionality: Options for making posts for items of interest and comment in response.
• Pages: Includes landing page, login/sign-up page, community pages and user profile for managing listings as well as a message board page for viewing other posts and having interactions.

Key Technologies & Installations

• Node.js and Express.js: For RESTful API to handle data retrieval and addition.
• Handlebars.js: Templating engine for dynamic content rendering.
• MySQL and Sequelize ORM: Managing user information, listings, and potentially message board interactions.
• Cloudindary Cloud storage for image library of listings.
• Other Dependencies - bcrypt, cloudinary, dotenv, express, multer.

Project Structure

• Breakdown of Tasks: Used MVC structure, login authentication, view components, database management, and routes/controllers setup.
• MVC Structure: Organized into models, views, and controllers for efficient development and maintenance.
• Authentication: Implemented express-session and cookies for user authentication and security as well as user input validation.
• Environment Variables: Safeguarded API keys and sensitive information.

Demo

• Note: The low quality of the GIF is due to the video's length.

Deployed URL: https://share-sphere-68ac42e28aff.herokuapp.com/

Future Enhancements

• Creating Community: Options for creating community, tag, or category to increase user engagement.
• Loans: Parnterships with Loan Providers or Credit Card Services.
• Parnterships: Parnterships with Furniture Stores or Business to Business Providers.
• Ratings: Rate the Members to give other users feedback on the experience, ease of use, communication, timeliness, condition of item, etc.
• Residence Verification: Ensuring Members are verified to share within their community.
• Search Functionality: Options for searching by zip code, community, tag, or category to streamline item discovery.
• Chats Social: Messaging and communicating with one another online.
• Profile Sharing: Building online friendships.

Contributors

• UI/UX & Agile Lead: Benita I.
• Database, Cloud & Deployment: Keri S.
• Lead Engineer: Evelyn E.
• Community Pages & SEO: Manya N.
• Architecture & Design: Melissa W.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.