Phaze

A sleek, safe, and user-friendly charity finder for everyone

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Phaze

Inspiration

We were inspired by the theme 'Using technology to help those in need' for this Hackathon to make a project that allows the user to effectively upload a charity with accurate and concise information to help out the less fortunate and raise awareness. You can 'Phaze' to easily browse and find a notable charity, and use the information posted on Phaze to effectively donate to that good cause. We believe that this is an important project to create because it is essential for people to be engaged in helping others, without a system that creates dopamine such as 'likes' or 'upvotes', rather sheer positive, and content-based data. Phaze is meant to be a harmless solution to a problem that limits the amount of donations and gifts a charity receives, which is incomplete information, or information not easily gathered. Phaze fixes this issue because it allows users to share complete information about charities on a standardized level on the same platform with minimal negative cognitive reactions, which allows people of all communities and nationalities to unite together under a common cause.

What it does

'Phaze' allows users to find charities easily, free of charge. The user interface is relatively simple to minimize confusion and save time. This allows the user to easily search for charities when feeling generous, with tools such as filters and a clean modern style and look throughout. This project has a profound social impact as it allows for users to quickly and accurately find information about charities, where they can then donate to help those in need. It is a friendlier and more accessible website that gets the job done perfectly without any negative effects, such as advertisements or incomplete information.

How we built it

We built Phaze 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. Our CSS fits a ocean and sky blue theme because we wanted it to symbolize people across different oceans could be united together, as they all reside under the same sky. This shows unity and encourages people that are completely different from each other to donate to the same charities, or different ones, as long as they help those in need.

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 charity pages, because it was necessary for the code to be functional, and the format to remain clean and simplistic. We sometimes couldn't figure out a issue, causing our code to error back, but we always found a way to fix it, and bring Phaze to the world.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made the website look beautiful and efficient. We spent many hours diligently 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, which took quite some time to create.

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 was 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 a images folder. Debugging was a prominent aspect of our project, and it showed up many many times.

What's next for Phaze

We plan to further expand the project's capabilities and functions. Additionally, we also would like to enhance 'Phaze', 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 find good causes to donate to. We would like to one day develop Phaze 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 Phaze are limitless, with our aspirations to create a positive, helpful digital community that helps people in need growing in the future.

Fun fact: Phaze's logo is 3 uppercase versions of the Greek symbol 'Phi', which stands for the 3 members of the developer team

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