Inspiration
The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on everyone. One of the hardest parts to navigate has been the isolation from our loved ones. It has been a real struggle to connect with others. Even today, as we continue navigating this challenging time, the impact on social connections are still significant. For example, the typical church attendance is down by 15% compared to pre-pandemic levels. One teammate even stopped going to church because of COVID and found it has been tough to connect with others. That is why we created this site - to provide a platform that allows people to connect with each other through the power of prayers. Users can write prayers to whomever they wish, and they can also read prayers written by others. The best part is that our site is fully anonymous, so you can feel free to share all your thoughts, emotions, and prayers without fear of judgement. We believe that this site will foster feelings of gratitude, happiness, and a deeper connection between individuals. By sharing your prayers and reading the prayers of others, you are reminded that you are not alone in your struggles. There are others with similar experiences. So, if you're feeling alone or just need a space where you can open up, this is the place to be! We hope you feel welcome.
What it does
Our site allows people to anonymously enter prayers or say prayers for others. We feel this will lead to more gratitude and happiness by our users. In turn, this will lead to more personal connections.
How we built it
We first thought to create it using a React front end and a Golang back end, but we ended up losing our team member with knowledge on React and could not get the Golang to run from the live website. So, we decided to pivot to HTML, and CSS for the front end combined with PHP for the back end and SQL calls embedded in the pages.
Challenges we ran into
Early on we lost an expert React teammate and others who thought about joining backed out. This caused us to pivot on our tech stack. We also faced issues running our code through the XAMPP software. PHP was pretty new for us, so we had to do research to get everything to work correctly.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that out website is live! We are also thrilled that we could create the Read Prayer functionality to work correctly.
What we learned
Technically - We installed XAMPP on our laptops to be able to locally test PHP code. It was also a first to set up SQL databases for some of us. Postman was awesome for testing database APIs calls. Socially - We learned to keep cool and go with the flow during a hackathon. We cannot control what other people decide and time is too short to let those decisions weigh us down.
What's next for The Prayers Network
- Though the site looks a lot better than it did at the start, we want to enhance the CSS.
- There are a few things we would like to add to the site such as the ability to respond to other peoples prayers through comments, likes, etc to increase interaction.
- We want to let others know about the site and promote its use.
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