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Hello all!

The last week went a little slow for me. I had a college thing  to do apart from working on this project which took up some of my time.

I was talking about creating a loading animation in last week’s blog. Happy to say that the feature was accepted by the mentors and the PR got merged. I think we are on the right track, and an MVP is almost ready. Apart from this I worked on little things. A few modifications were required on the Story page. My partner Aditya added backend logic for the voting mechanism and then I created a relevant UI for it. Also, the layout was a little inconsistent so I worked on perfecting that. After a few discussions we decided that we’ll have a Product specification as well, i.e. stories can be related to different products so I added the relevant dropdowns on the different pages and then Aditya took up the work of adding the logic.

I did not face any issues over the past week and I am looking forward to what’s coming up next. I might be getting a new design for the entire platform soon, so I’ll probably work on that.

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Hello all!

The second evaluation is now quite near and I am a little nervous about it. 

Okay, so let us talk about what I did over the past few weeks in detail. The comments component is still under development. Me and my partner are still thinking about the best way to go about it. Multiple big PRs got merged in the master branch last week. Two of them were related to User Profile. I worked on creating two profile pages. One is the My Profile page, which will only be visible to an authenticated user. This page houses all the relevant details about the user, like their profile picture, their bio, username, email id, about information etc. and options to change/update these. The other is a more general Profile page which will be present for each user and anyone can open this page up. This page houses the relevant details about that particular user as well as all the stories that he/she has submitted. Creating these two pages based on the design and making them responsive was a little tricky and challenging but I was able to do it with help from my mentor. Once the UI for these was ready, it was the time for adding the relevant backend logic to these pages which was taken up by my partner Aditya. 

Apart from the Profile component, I worked on some UI fixes. My partner Aditya added a few features to pages which I then styled based on the theme of that page. Also, there were a few bugs here and there which I was able to point out and fix. By the end of the week, I thought that it would be relevant to add a Loading Animation in the UI wherever some Backend fetching is taking place. I looked up different ways to achieve it and finally decided on using a package called react-promise-tracker. After understanding how the package exactly works, I tried to add it in the existing code base one by one. After several tries I was able to create the functionality I was looking for and after a little review by mentors I finalised the design and put up a PR. A lot of the features are yet to be implemented or are half implemented so I’ll work on those in the upcoming week and probably finish up with a MVP before the 2nd evaluation.

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Hello all!

The past 6 weeks have been pretty amazing and I have learned a lot of new things. 

The last week was kinda smooth is what I'd say. I worked on the Comments component that will be added to the Individual Story page. A basic responsive UI is ready and it is working fine. Now we are working on implementing the exact logic for this component so that it supports all the features that any other similar platform offers. I also worked on the 'My Stories' page where users can view stories that they have submitted as well as stories that they are following (stories you have liked/commented). The PR for this was merged but the 'Following' section logic is yet to be done because its backend hasn't been created yet. Once the comments section work is finished followed by the 'liking' mechanism I'll work on this section and complete it. Other than this I worked on resolving several UI related issues that emerged when the backend connectivity was added.

I did not face any major issue this week as a lot of the work was done by my partner this week. All the issues were resolved easily over a small video call and I think we are working at a decent pace.

Now, I'll be working on the Comments section and ensure that all of its logic is finished by the end of this week. Also, I'll work on adding the 'like' feature on the story page. If I get time then I'll also work on the 'Timeline' of every story.

Hello all!

It has been over a month since the official coding period began and the first evaluation just got over. Just received a message saying 900$ have been deposited in my account. It is an amazing feeling and I can't describe how happy I am right now.

The product finally got a name last week. We chose 'User Stories' as the name of this product. This was followed by changing the code to say 'User Stories' instead of 'Feature Requests'. Every submission will basically be a 'story' and not a 'request'. Over the past two weeks I have been working with creating and viewing a new story. Me and my partner have been working on multiple pages that will fetch content from the backend in a particular format and display it to the user. Also, there is one page called 'New Story' page will be used to create the new stories. This page is now complete with all the backend connectivity and we have been testing it. Apart from this, based on discussions with the mentor I worked on creating wireframes for a few more pages. We decided to add a 'My Profile' page which will house all the information about the user (Profile picture, username, email, about etc). There will be two types of user profiles. One that the user opens up and can change the content that is being shown and the other is when some other user opens up your profile where they can see the information about you as well as your 'stories'. I worked on creating designs for this and after a few rounds of discussions they were approved. I have also been working on a 'My Stories' page but that is still under discussion so I'll probably talk about it next week.

I did not face any issues this time around. The only places I got stuck were related to the backend connectivity and a few calls with my partner resolved all of them. 
Like I said, I'll work on the 'My Stories' page this week and complete all the backend logic for the other pages.

Hello all!

It has been about 4 weeks since the official coding period started and the first evaluation is here. The entire month has been productive and I am having a lot of fun.

This last week I was mainly working on the New Request page. As discussed with the mentors I first worked on creating a wireframe for this page using AdobeXD. After a few rounds of discussions the UI was finalised and I started working. One by one I created the different types of inputs that the users will be offered when they access this page. Simultaneously I was working on adding styles for these elements as well. I tried my best to reuse the existing SCSS 'classes'. While doing this I ended up refactoring the entire SCSS. Basic idea in mind while refactoring was to make sure that the styling becomes as generic as possible and a standard styling is followed for all elements of the same type across the project. Apart from this, based on discussions with the mentors, we decided to add a Rich Text Editor instead of the traditional textarea for users to describe their request. This would give a better user experience. My partner Aditya took up the job of adding this element and he did a fantastic job. While I Aditya was working on the Editor I was working on making sure that the page is responsive and can be used across devices having different sizes. 

I was comfortable with the work I did this last week and did not face any issues or got stuck anywhere.

Now, we will be working on completing the backend connectivity for the New Request page. This will be followed by testing the page by making a few dummy requests and viewing them in the backend. Also, I would work on displaying the requests in the frontend and other aspects associated with it.