Blaze

A sleek, safe, and user-friendly wiki creator for the community.

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Blaze

Inspiration

We were inspired by the theme 'Community' for this Hackathon to make a project that allows the user to effectively open a wiki, with accurate, and concise information to clear confusion within users. You can 'Blaze' for alternative methods to encyclopedias or forums, without toxicity or arguments. We believe that this is an important project to create because it is essential for people to be engaged in active discussions, without a system that creates dopamine such as 'likes' or 'upvotes', with sheer positive and content-based data. Blaze is meant to be a harmless solution to the problem that social media causes in this day and age. It allows users to share information to open discussions with minimal negative cognitive reactions, which allows people of all communities, genders, races, and ethnicities to enjoy 'Blaze'.

What it does

'Blaze' allows users to find what they are searching for, free of charge. The user interface is relatively simple to minimize confusion and save time. This allows the user to easily search for discussion forums when requiring help, superior to alternatives such as AI, due to the community-feeling, and ability to search for qualified professionals, in a respectful, nonjudgmental setting. This project has a profound social impact as it diverts users from traditional social media websites and applications, which are known to deplete cognitive ability. It is a friendlier and more accessible website that gets the job done without any negative effects. Such negative effects are specifically highlighted in a research study by Hasan Beyari of Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia, and Sen-Chi Yu of National Taichung University, who say that "likes, comments, and followers were the biggest contributors to poor mental health (total utility = 56.24)". The full study can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9915628/#. Blaze is also very enjoyable to users, as shown by the positive user reviews (in the images).

How we built it

We built Blaze with HTML, CSS, Flask, jQuery, Bootstrap, and Python. We built the frontend with HTML, CSS, and jQuery, and we built the backend with Flask, Python, and SQLAlchemy. Furthermore, we made our websites and user interfaces with hundreds of lines of HTML and CSS, and we used JavaScript for easy user interactions that seemed flawless. We utilized Flask to handle uploads and authentications securely and efficiently. The Flask applications can be seen in our Python file app.py. We also used SQLAlchemy as our database.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into numerous challenges along the way, which further motivated us to improve our rigor, and work efficiency. Some notable challenges included customizing colors for CSS, writing custom CSS while having Bootstrap, debugging Flask applications that didn't run, debugging HTML code that rendered incorrectly, and fixing the image sizes so that they were standardized and fixed. We ran into many issues with file names, folders, and directories that we had to fix and debug. We mainly ran into issues with our CSS but managed to fix most of them. Not only that, but we also ran into issues with our database and authentication systems, including the login and signing page, but managed to fix them in time. We also struggled with creating the wiki pages, because it was necessary for the code to be functional, and the format to remain clean and simplistic.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made the website look beautiful and efficient. We spent many hours customizing the CSS and aligning the HTML so it would look perfect. Moreover, we were also able to create a functional and efficient Flask system, along with a robust SQL database. We are also proud of our custom branding, logos, color schemes, and images. Finally, we were satisfied with the modern charm and appeal of the video.

What we learned

We learned how to work together as a team successfully. We also learned how to use source control to manage our production. Our frontend developers learned many aspects of HTML and CSS, such as aligning and coloring various items, which proved to be a tedious task. Our backend developers learned how to use Flask efficiently and many aspects of making a website that is successfully running with Flask, such as containing images in the static folder instead of an images folder. Debugging was a prominent aspect of our project, used constantly.

What's next for Blaze

We plan to further expand the website's capabilities and functions. Additionally, we also would like to enhance 'Blaze', and make it more world-renowned through heavy improvements so that communities of different, races, genders, ethnicities, and more, all have a comfortable space to learn and discuss a broad range of topics. Blaze has immense improvement potential, having the opportunity to be recognized on an international scale, for advocating different communities, including affirmative action organizations. Improvements that could be made in the future are to open respectful discussion forums and threads, to open organizational tags to sort categories, and to automate functional and efficient moderation. Additionally, we would like to continue our improvement of Blaze's quality by incorporating wiki editing features, further expanding the community's potential. However, most importantly, we would like to one day develop Blaze to a more extensive, refurbished point, and raise awareness to give back to our communities in need. The potential is vast, and the uses for Blaze are limitless, with our aspirations to create a positive, helpful digital community growing in the future.

Fun fact: Blaze's logo is 3 lowercase versions of the Greek symbol 'Beta' (β), which stands for raising awareness, uniting communities, and giving back to them.

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