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Introducing Bestresources.co - Share & explore personal resources at one place!
Namaste 🙏
I am Pankaj, a self taught software developer passionate about exploring tech. Today, I feel extremely proud to launch https://bestresources.co - my submission for HarperDB hackathon on Hashnode
Motivation
One fine day, I was having a technical discussion on a Linkedin comment thread. I had written a blog post on Apache Kafka so I was asked if I could share some good resources available on the same.
This was my moment of inspiration to build a solution for the tiring, cumbersome job of finding the relevant resources. How do you actually learn something new in today’s life?
Suppose you want to learn JavaScript. There are plenty of resources available on the web. You hit a search on google, and you start reading. You waste a plenty of time to find some perfect resources for you.
But here is the catch! When someone else starts learning JavaScript, he too repeats the same cycle. How can the process be expedited?
What if you could share your personal resources with the guy? What if you had access to the resources used by seniors engineers at the first place? It would have saved a tons of time.
Well, there are a couple of ways, some of the devs post a blog sharing your resources. BUT this is not scalable. Not everyone can find their blogs on the internet.
One, will have to dig deeper. It takes a lot of time to find something worthy.
I felt the need of a dedicated platform, where people can share their resources, personally used by them.
Introducing Bestresources.co - a free platform for the community to share & get direct access to the personal resources of the community.
https://bestresources.co is now live with curated resources by senior developers from Google, Amazon, Uber etc and so many self taught developers & freelancers.
Our Story
Story of https://bestresources.co started with a comment. Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to this idea and put it aside (like every other dev). But on 19 June, I got to know about the HarperDB hackathon by Hashnode & it motivated me to work on it.
I had a very limited time but I decided to finish the development and launch it anyhow.
I had to manage my regular job, my freelancing projects and other work. I enjoyed working late at night . I continued to ship features as much as possible. I had already made up my mind that I will not keep it as a demo project, whatever it takes, I will launch it.
And within 1.5 week, I was able to launch bestresoures.co 🎉
Features -
I am very very sensitive to code quality. 😛 While maintaining the code quality, (as much as possible), https://bestresources.co is live with below features -
1. Listing of interesting resources
As you head over to bestresources.co, it brings you interesting resources. Explore the hidden gem of the web.
2. Create & Manage
Add & share your resources with the community at a single click. Easy and beautiful UI will make it easier for you to do so.
3. Express gratitude to the author
Who does not like appreciation? Express your gratitude to the author author for taking out time and sharing his resources.
4. Bookmark
Save the resource for later use at just one tap. We always remember what you save!
5. Social Share
Loved the resource? Share socially and spread some love at a single click.
6. Search
Just type what you are looking to learn, we bring the best curated resources to you.
7. Sort
Sort the resources by interest, trend and time.
8. Magic Link - One tap authentication
Arrghhh. Remembering passwords is tough. Just type in your email and we will send you a secure magic link to login on a click.
9. Featured
Every week, we feature one resource to the home page, loved by the community.
10. The world of tags
Create and search & filter resources by popular tags. Suggest new tags!
11. Weekly newsletter
Every week, we send you some really exciting & interesting resources direct to your inbox.
12. Profile
We love author recognition. Update your profile and let your audience find you on social media.
13. Notifications
We notify you when something interesting comes up related to you.
14. Responsive and mobile friendly
Access https://bestresources.co from any device and spread love.
Technology Stack
Bestresources.co is baked by the latest tech stack. Here is the list -
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NodeJs - Best backend JavaScript run time environment
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HarperDB - Oh gosh! Fastest and the most flexible data storage. Single node, handling upto 100000 requests per second seamlessly.
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Express - Super simple, backend application framework for NodeJs
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Angular - JavaScript based frontend framework built by Google.
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Nginx - Used as high performance load balancer, web server and reverse proxy. Very handy when it comes to caching.
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AWS EC2 - Secure and resizable compute capacity in the cloud, deployed the application over there
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Cloudflare - For SSL, client side caching & internet security
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Mailgun - For email delivery
P.S. I personally send a thank you email to everyone who signs up, for showing trust!
What's next?
https://bestresources.co is ready to roll out some really exciting features in a couple of weeks.
- Dark mode, of-course [first priority]
- Personalised content in a more optimised manner
- Mobile App
- Auto detection of bad content and links
- Comment thread for the resource
- Thank the author with a note.
- Hall of Fame (a separate page including most loved authors with their social media handles)
- Idea Box (Request community for resources - inspired from hashnode)
- Public APIs for developers to play with
- Google, Github authentication
- A more improved notifications
- Improve trending section
- High performance server side caching and a lot more
Would love to hear your valuable feedback or new feature requests.
Well, there were a lot of challenges on the way to bringing this project to life. It was fun, I will cover it in a separate post in detail.
Github
The complete source code is available on github. Feel free to DM me on twitter if you need more details. Would love to help.
If you feel like contributing to the platform, feel free to raise a PR. Let's give something back to the community.
Try Bestresources.co
There are many others, who have guided and helped this project come to life - friends, family, Hashnode, internet strangers!
I am most grateful for everyone’s kindness ❤️
Support
If you feel, my little initiative https://bestresourcse.co adds value to you, please share it with your friends. Drop me a message on twitter, It's the real motivation for me.