LITReview is a (fictional - for education purposes) start-up that aims to release a product that enables a community of users to review books and literature on demand.
This MVP (minimum viable product) has been developed with the Django framework.
Bootstrap 4 has been used for the design, completed with a few lines of vanilla CSS.
The python package django-crispy-forms has been used to render most forms in the application.
To install this web application:
- Clone this project to your local disk.
- Create and open a virtual environment:
$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate - Install all the packages required in requirements.txt.
$ pip install -r requirements.txt- Run the server through the console.
$ python3 manage.py runserver- Open localhost on your browser: http://127.0.0.1:8000/
First, a user needs to sign up and log in to the application.
Only a username and a password are required. The password must contain at least 8 characters.
For testing purposes, a few users have been created with content (username / password):
- book_reviewer / book_reviewer2023
- super_review / super_review2023
- litreviewer / litreviewer2023
You are welcome to create your own user account and follow the users above.
A navigation bar allows to navigate through the pages of the application:
The navigation bar is always visible when the user scrolls down.
For smaller screen, the options collapse into a dropdown menu with a burger button.
The first page the user sees is their feed. The feed shows:
- all the users own tickets and reviews,
- the ticket and reviews of the other user they follow,
- and all the reviews of their own tickets, even if they don't follow the author.
From the feed, the user can:
- create a new ticket to request a review of a book or literature article,
- post a review of a book or article that does not have a ticket yet (the ticket will be created in the process),
- post a review from a ticket in their feed
Once a user has posted a review, they are not able to post another review on the same ticket.
This page allows the user to edit or delete their own posts, tickets and reviews.
Deleting a ticket will delete all the associated reviews.
On this page, the user can enter other users' username to follow them.
They can see the list of users they follow, and are able to unfollow them.
They can also see the list of their own followers
The Logout button is located in the dropdown menu with the user's username.
Once the user logs out, they are properly notified and invited to log again, if they want.
The style is composed mostly with Bootstrap 4.
The app displays a minimal user interface, following the requirements for this MVP including the wireframes.
Consistency was achieved through the use of Django templates and partial templates, as well as the library Bootstrap 4, and crispy-forms.
- Display of tickets
- Display of reviews
- Display of forms
- Display of usernames (or "you" for the current user)
- Display of dates, buttons, links, forms...
Ergonomic and aesthetic improvements to provide a better user experience:
- Design of empty state pages
- Provides useful feedback and ways to create content
- Useful feedback messages
- To confirm actions, like the deletion of a post
- Colored distinction between tickets and reviews
- Visual help for a better browsing experience
- Use of emojis
- Makes the app more lively
Currently: the 404 page is displayed by Django while the app is in DEBUG mode.
Goal: display a custom 404 page to provide useful information to the users.
Currently: the date and time are displayed in the UTC time zone.
Goal: display date and time according to the user's timezone.
Currently: a user can only follow another user if they know their username.
Goal: allow user to discover other users to initiate relationships.
Currently: no comment is allowed on reviews.
Goal: allow user to respond to a review, to open interactions between users.
Currently: tickets and reviews are only sorted by date/time of creation.
Goal: give the ability to aggregate all reviews of a same ticket to help reading through them.
Currently: a user can find a ticket or a review by scrolling their feed.
Goal: add a search engine to quickly find a ticket or a review.