iframe

A Full-fledged forum build upon the Django framework.

Introduction

The forum features a category based system. In these categories users can create threads and comment on newly start threads by users. There is also the possiblity to interact with the profiles of other users, aswell of using administrative rights if those have been granted to the user.

Requirements

Python, v3.4+ since these have pip by default
Pip v1.8+
Virtualenv
Unix subsystems: Pip install virtualenv
Windows : py -m pip install virtualenv

Getting started (manually)

Unix subsystems

1. virtualenv venv in the main folder
2. source venv/bin/activate
3. pip install -r requirements.txt
   Now you can start the app

Windows

1. py -m virtualenv venv in the main folder
2. call venv/Scripts/activate
3. pip install -r requirements.txt
   Now you can start the app

Starting the app

It's recommended you always do python src/manage.py migrate to ensure your database reflects all changes in the migrations before starting the server by python src/manage.py runserver

Once you have started the server, you can visit the forum on localhost:8000

Features

Current Features

• User accounts w/ user profiles
• A navigatable history of the user his activity on the server
• The ability to create posts with a WYSIWYG editor
• The ability to edit posts
• Persistent data storage

Wanted features

• A revamp of the user interface. This because right now the UI is created using the css framework bootstrap v4. However, it lacks UX, the usage of various design patterns & a style that shows my personality ( I want to do this for my minor's course webdesign
• The usage of NodeJS & socket.io to give real-time feedback to the user. This should increase the user feedback by a huge margin, and will also be very interesting to see how the intergration between 2 backends work. Hopefully this will also improve my knowledge about the difference between node & django

Argumentation NodeJS intergration

First of all, i'm taking inspiration of Pinterest & Instagram, who both use NodeJS in combination with Django in their backend. There is also a basic tutorial about it, together with multiple helpful resources.

I feel that doing something architectural like this could be a huge asset for me in terms of knowledge about NodeJS, aswell as how it can be used in combination with other Backends, and how the realtime aspect can be leveraged even with these technologies.

The implementation also seems quite plausible as I've already exposed various API points, from which I can fetch data, and possibly can leverage to make the dispatching and receiving messages from Socket.io a reality.

This will be without a doubt a difficult project, but seeing as it will most likely be able to keep me busy for 2 weeks, and will test my knowledge further.