ULOG #27: Creating Communities in Ulogs.org

Communities are one of the core aspects of STEEM. Whether it be a curation community, a development community, or others communities. Communities play an important role in any platform. Take the community away, and you have no users interacting. Take the technology away, and you have no tool for your community to interact.

Communities and technology go hand-in-hand in STEEM's sociability. With this in mind, Terry (@surpassinggoogle) came up with a feature to add creation of communities within https://ulogs.org.

If this is the first time you've come across ulogs.org, I suggest you watch this video to learn more.

This contribution added the function to create ulog communities within ulogs.org, plus some other previous development contributions I only had the time to write about today.

1. Repository

https://github.com/surpassinggoogle/UlogsV2

2. Task Request/Issue

https://github.com/surpassinggoogle/UlogsV2/issues/186

3. Pull Requests

https://github.com/surpassinggoogle/UlogsV2/pull/279
https://github.com/surpassinggoogle/UlogsV2/pull/280
https://github.com/surpassinggoogle/UlogsV2/pull/288
https://github.com/surpassinggoogle/UlogsV2/pull/291
https://github.com/surpassinggoogle/UlogsV2/pull/292
https://github.com/surpassinggoogle/UlogsV2/pull/293

4. Testing

These were the tests manually done in Chrome:

1. Feature: New #ulog-subtag Feed Should Display a Custom Collapse Panel
   • Visit any ulog-subtag not indicated in the exception list written by Terry on the issue
     • 
   • Expected Result:
     • A collapse panel (default collapsed) with the following text should display on top of the feed
     • 
2. Feature: Empty About #ulog-subtag on the Right Side Bar
   • Visit any ulog-subtag not indicated in the exception list written by Terry on the issue
   • Expected Results:
     • An empty About #ulog-subtag on the right side bar should display with a Post Now button
     • Clicking on Post Now should bring the user to the ulog main editor
3. Feature: Create Community Page
   • Visit the create community page directly via address bar or from the user's top nav panel
   • Input a tag with an empty feed (no posts created with it yet); try something bogus like bogus
   • Expected Results:
     • Input community should be validated (error, if posts already exists)
     • Clicking Create Community should automatically create a post for the user and redirect to the post

5. Implementation

Because of the amount of work (source codes) that went into this, I can only mention the major files modified:

1. src/client/community/CreateCommunity.js - the main community creation page
   
2. src/client/feed/UlogGenericCaption.js - the generic caption component for the right side bar
   
3. src/client/feed/Page.js - modified the feed page to display the collapse panel for empty ulog-subtags
   
4. src/client/components/Sidebar/UlogGamesExchanges.js - split the #ulog-games and #ulog-exchanges stories to display on the right side bar
   

6. Feature in Action

7. Lesson Learned

Split and solve is a common strategy I do when doing development tasks. It’s also known as divide and conquer.

I split down an epic task into chunks and work on each chunk one at a time. When you look at it on this level, it seems that little is being done, which is the truth. The magic happens with time. When these small tasks are consistently completed in a span of time. Collectively, they contribute to the bigger picture - they complete the epic task you started with.

8. GitHub Account

https://github.com/eastmaels