Inspiration
My inspiration really just comes from my own heart. I am an avid practicioner of meditation and the idea just came to me. I want to make a positive change in the world that has a lasting impact. Compassion In Need is my attempt at doing just that.
What it does
Compassion In Need is a website free of ads and can be used free of charge. It is intended to connect like-minded people who are looking to improve their local community through their own proposed community projects. It all starts with an idea, just like anything else in our reality. Thought always comes before action. Users of the site will discuss the idea and this will lead the original poster (OP) to develop a plan. This plan includes all of the logistics in how to make the idea a reality. This includes how many (if needed) volunteers are needed, where it is taking place, when it will take place, how it will take place, why it will take place, permits needed(?), finances required, etc. Users will have the opportunity to make recommendations (comments for now) on how to make the plan better and the OP will approve/disapprove these recommendations. After all recommendations are exhausted or until OP decides, a master plan is finalized and it's on to the last step, the event . The event is simply the final product of your idea and plan in the form of physical action. So essentially, this is a platform for crowd-sourced community service.
How I built it
I made a simple logo design before I came to HackMizzou and already registered the domain and installed Wordrpess through my host, Siteground. I didn't have anything on my site other than a rough philosophy page on what I envisioned the site to be. I built this site through Wordpress and made use of the plentiful plugins.
Challenges I ran into
The hardest part about making my site was not knowing what I was doing at first. It took me hours of trial and error to get all (or most) of the features that I wanted to put on my site. A lot of what I wanted to do was easy to do with paid plugins, but I didn't have money to spend on that so I had to find workarounds.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I am just proud that I didn't let my idea stay an idea. I made it manifest into reality. It's easy to dream, and it's so rewarding to make that dream come true.
What I learned
I learned that it's actually not that hard to make a website once you just push through some barriers. Wordpress is a lot more powerful tool than I thought it was.
What's next for Compassion In Need
Up next is an updated front page that will display a community funds pot. It will show donations to the site in real time and the pot will grow. The community funds will be distributed to the community projects that need them.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.