GoMoreCreative App ✨

The application was built to help you train your creativity.

I am a huge fan of the simple technique according to which you just simply write 10 ideas a day and in this way become more creative. I was using it for about 2 months in my paper journal and can guarantee - it works.

When I was using this approach, sometimes the topic of my today 10 ideas was just "10 ideas for 10 ideas" which resulted in 10 topics for the next days - mostly topics associated with things I was doing on a daily basis.

And that's the reason, I was like: "It would be much more effective to get random topics that do not come from my head and about which I do not think at all, and as a result even more creative by making ideas".

And that's the reason I've made this app - to help you (and myself in the future, thanks to the features I want to add to it, listed at the end) in writing ideas for random topics and write them with more motivation due to points and streak features.

Some screenshots:

How can you run it in your local environment?

To be clear - I am using node 14.16, but the app works when using newer versions too (been testing it on 16.4.1, for instance).

Copy the repo:

git clone https://github.com/robert-orlinski/go-more-creative.git
cd the-path-to-which-you-cloned-the-project

Run the app:

npm install
npm run dev

What's important, you need to put MongoDB Atlas URL in the .env file to make your server working (you can copy .env.example and change its name to .env). The cluster associated with this URL needs to have 2 collections: entries and topics. Additionally, you need to make your own GitHub OAuth app, provide the ID and Secret of that app in the .env file, and put your local URL in the NEXTAUTH_URL variable.

If you want to build the project, you can use:

npm run build

And if you want to start the built project, you can use:

npm run start

Used technologies:

Front-End:

1. React.js (the main project framework);
2. Redux (the state managing tool for more predictable data flow);
3. Next.js (React framework with server side rendering, static pages generating and back-end building capabilities);
4. TypeScript (language which makes JavaScript type safe);
5. SCSS (CSS preprocessor);
6. NextAuth.js (authentication tool for Next.js);
7. React Hook Form (React library for better forms);
8. Jest and React Testing Library (for unit and React components testing);
9. MongoDB and Mongoose (as database tools).

What's next?

1. Add some UX improvements. For instance, loading animations on points and strike change, all DB errors handling.
2. Add better dates validation when it comes to the streak functionality.
3. Provide functions that let people add their topics and choose if they want to have it only for themself or share it with the whole community.
4. Replace NextAuth with something else. NextAuth can be really slow :c
5. Add Polish version.

And that's it for now. Maybe you have some ideas for new features? If yes, you can always propose them in the issues tab 😌

Contribution

GoMoreCreative is an open-source project done for training, so code review or contributions of any kind are welcome and appreciated. Feel free to make bug, code-review, enhancement or question requests in the issues tab ☀️