EcoHub

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Inspiration

We were inspired by online forum websites like Reddit and 4chan after finding a flaw in them. While they allow freedom of access to endless different communities they lose the ability to be specifically tailored to one.

What it does

Eco is a website hosting many online forums specifically about different topics of finances. Users can join communities like Stocks, Small Businesses, Taxes, Budgeting and many more. In these communities people can post questions, Ideas and get linked with verified professionals for help if desired. Verified creators like people with financial degrees, business owners, and even businesses themselves would be able to monetize the interactions on their posts. They could build a community off of their advise and relevance on the website. Well trusted, verified, and dependable creators would be pushed more often to incentivize the creation of high quality content for the community. With the introduction of monetization in this website comes the possibility of brining in more highly qualified individuals. There would also be the possibility to promote the creator's own business or services on their page. With the trustworthy and reliable creators and content on the site, it can be a place for people to learn and discuss money without worry.

How we built it

The process that we used for creating the idea and the implementation was by coming up with the idea of EcoHub and seeing what already exists and their successes and failures. In realizing the main failure with most other forum websites was the validity of every person, we wanted to embrace the idea of a verification system that would let the community know if a person was a verified professional or just an everyday user. In the HTML coding, we used resources like w3schools.com to teach us the basics in a quick and easy fashion. By learning the basics and having a background knowledge on computer science concepts, we were able to put together a demo website.

Challenges we ran into

While other forum websites do exist there is no specific way to lay them out since most websites like this do it in different ways. In response we learned how to code in HTML to begin creating a semi-functional form of our website. Some of the challenges we faced on the coding part was trying to not just learn, but also implement our ideas with our beginner knowledge. Another challenge was deciding if we would rather have functionality or appealing characteristics on the demo website since, given the limited time, it would be hard to implement both to their fullest extent. In the end we settled on functionality and expressing the idea through the demo code.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of the design of our website as well as the overarching concept. Other accomplishments would be learning how to use HTML with having little to no prior experience. Also, just creating a semi-funcining demo website that is able to express the idea of EcoHub is a large accomplishment for us.

What we learned

We learned decent amount of the coding language HTML to help with creating our website as well as general web design. We also learned a lot about time management and how to distribute labor effectively among the team so that everyone is working and productive on thing they are good at.

What's next for EcoHub

We do not see EcoHub just as a small site where you can discuss money but also as a learning platform, a place to build a community, and a way to make money for professional. EcoHub has the potential and, with work, the possibility of becoming a large platform that can inform and benefit the public and their finances.

Built With

• html5