https://messenjuice.herokuapp.com/
We noticed and were surprised by the fact that the people you live closest to are probably people you don’t even know, let alone talk to.
During the pandemic, people are even less willing to talk to each other. Ironically, during these times is when we have the need to socialize the most, so why not get to know your neighbours and the people in your community? Socializing is a proven method to relieve boredom and improve your mental health.
We noticed that there was no easy way for community members to get notified about events. We also saw how people in need could not easily spread the message and reach those who would be willing to donate.
Since elderly people are less inclined to use social media, Messenjuice would be a great option to help them connect with the community.
Messenjuice is a website that is designed to connect and help your community. The members of each community can chat with each other on Messenjuice and people can post all sorts of community events into the feed. Everyone will be able to see events such as garage sales, or a local food drive hosted at the community center.
Messenjuice also has a donation feed, where people in need can request supplies they need and others in the community would be able to donate them the requested items. In the case of special needs community members, a volunteer will be available to help deliver the supplies. Just fill in the delivery request form!
Messenjuice’s volunteer signup page allows people in the community to easily sign up to be volunteers and give back to the community during these tough times. Events that need volunteers will be able to take from the list of registered volunteers.
We used HTML and CSS to build and design all the webpages. We used JavaScript to add functionality to the webpages and node.js to communicate with our server. NeDB was used to store data from the user and Heroku was used to host the site.
We had to learn HTML and CSS from scratch via w3 schools and youtube tutorials. It was very time consuming and frustrating when elements did not work out.
We also had to learn JavaScript and work with its asynchronous nature, which was very different from other programming languages that we knew. This made debugging and executing functions synchronously very difficult.
Learning and using Github branches was kind of difficult. We would push to the same branch and the files would randomly disappear. We also ran into server issues using node.js including the “fetch()” function and the uncaught promise error that happens when responses or requests were not found.
Learning HTML and CSS in two days is impressive we would say. The webpages look decent and it works pretty well too. Learning how to create a web application using node.js and learning how to save data into a database is pretty impressive to us and it really shows us how servers are created and run.
We learned the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, neDB, node.js and Heroku. We acquired the skills to create a fully functional and aesthetically pleasing website. We also learned how to collaborate with each other and use our skills and strengths optimally.
We want to get communities onboard with using Messenjuice. We could pitch it to mayors and other community leaders. We would also need to add some sort of monetization to Mesenjuice in the form of advertisements.