Course Blocks - Create & Enroll in Courses, Plus Track Your Progress
Previous updates: First Post & Back End / User Authentication & Restructure Code
I finally have a fully functioning site! I haven’t deployed the code to Heroku yet (I need to add/update my integration tests), but I’ve been testing it locally and it now has a fully functioning feature set.
That said, it’s still super rough, and feels much more like a student project than I was hoping it would. A lot of it will just require some time to smooth out the user experience (I’m using alerts to prompt the user for input in the course creation screen right now >.<), but in the interest of time I’m going to try turning the project in as is after I fix my tests and deploy it.
The two pull requests attached to this update were mainly about connecting my front end site to the back end and making sure everything works properly. I had to update and add several end points to get everything to work as intended.
Project Summary
I’m creating a site where anyone can create and enroll in courses for free. It will not require registration to view any of the courses, but an account will allow users to track their progress.
The first phase of the project will be built with HTML/CSS/JavaScript/jQuery/Node/Mongo and handed in as my second capstone project with Thinkful. After I finish the web development program in a few months, my plan is to completely rebuild the front end in React and then connect it to the Steem blockchain. Here is a video I made on DTube that explains my larger plans. The three main components are (the first iteration will only contain the first component):
- a site to create and enroll in courses
- a community for each course that is either a forum or Stack Overflow style question and answer section
- a marketplace where students can find tutors for help with courses through video chat
Create Course
This pull request added the functionality to create courses and update them on the database.
Enroll
This pull request added the ability to enroll in courses and track progress.
Next
The main thing to do before handing this project in is to update all of my tests and make sure they pass, before deploying the site to Heroku. I also need to make sure responsive design is working properly and iron out any style issues by testing the site on various devices/browsers.
Feedback / Contributions
I’m currently in the process of learning web development full-time, so I’m very open to absolutely any suggestions or advice about my code. Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on Github.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors
Can you give some instructions on how to get the project working?
There is unauthorized returned in index page when it tries to access api/users
Need help? Write a ticket on https://support.utopian.io.
Chat with us on Discord.
[utopian-moderator]
Hmm, it’s working fine for me. You have a local mongo instance running?
There are no instructions for it, you should add them so that I can know how to get everything running and maybe a test db can be added to the config file.
Thanks!
You can ping me on Discord to fasten up the review process of it.
Hey @ms10398, I just gave you a tip for your hard work on moderation. Upvote this comment to support the utopian moderators and increase your future rewards!
Hey @jeffbernst! Thank you for the great work you've done!
We're already looking forward to your next contribution!
Fully Decentralized Rewards
We hope you will take the time to share your expertise and knowledge by rating contributions made by others on Utopian.io to help us reward the best contributions together.
Utopian Witness!
Vote for Utopian Witness! We are made of developers, system administrators, entrepreneurs, artists, content creators, thinkers. We embrace every nationality, mindset and belief.
Want to chat? Join us on Discord https://discord.me/utopian-io
Your contribution is approved!
Thanks!
I will advise you to decrease the amount of code you comment out.
Your UI was appealing and your idea is cool.
Need help? Write a ticket on https://support.utopian.io.
Chat with us on Discord.
[utopian-moderator]
Thank you!
Good to see you still working on this Jeff. Hope you continue after the project is turned in.
Are you planning to turn this into Udemy on Steem? (or did I imagine that?) Been thinking about that a lot recently.
Yeah Udemy on Steem is pretty much the plan! I hope I continue working on it too. It hit me that I need to finish up quickly and get a job, but I’m definitely planning on continuing with this one after it’s turned it.
Hope all has been well with you and your projects!
Hey, great work. This is a very ambitious project. I'm glad to see that you still have the energy working on it.
Testing, yes, this is something I should take away from your post and apply to my projects, haha :)
(Regarding your comment below:) Are you applying for a job as a web developer?
Haha yeah the tests have been seriously frustrating for some reason. I'm hoping that this extra practice makes it easier and less of a nuisance next time :P
Yup! I'll be applying for jobs as a web developer in a couple months. I'll probably be applying mostly for remote work, but I'll probably just have to take whatever job will pay my rent. I'm really hoping I've learned enough to get some entry level work!
I think you are on a good path. You showed that you could build web applications. Do you have any places you look for remote work?
Actually I haven't started looking quite yet. I'll be putting my portfolio together next month and getting my search started. The only place I've started browsing to see what kinds of jobs are available is https://remoteok.io/
I will keep my fingers crossed that you will find your dream job.
Thank you :D