This Friday, we went for a simple hack: writing a simple “Launching Soon” website for Polydigital, hosted via Github Pages.

Polydigital is an upcoming startup that focuses in Web3 and dWeb technologies, specially on both the Ethereum and Handshake blockchains. We wanted to come up with a very simple and elegant design. We decided to try the “WeBuild” template fom BootstrapMade (which we have a license).

The template was very easy to use and the original version looks like this:

We removed some unnecessary information such as the countdown and the contact-us form, to keep it more simplistic and give it a “Stealth Mode” vibe

We added Polydigital’s logo and we looked for a royalty-free red background image that can transmit the concept of “poly” or “multiple”, and the first idea that came to mind was to implement a 3D version background containing some polygons. We found this amazing design on Pixabay and we went with it

The final (prototype) design came together as follows:

Now, it is important to point out that the background image does not look very well for large-sized screens. For instance, it does not look great on a 34” screen (as the image is more for square-type of windows), but it does look great on mobile phones. Another important part to mention is that the logo resizing needs work. It looks ok on a big screen, but too small on a mobile phone. Not a big deal, but it is something to fix in the future.

Finally, we added a contact button showing the contact email and we left plenty of space for Social Media links.

Credits:

• BootstrapMade’s WeBuild Website: https://bootstrapmade.com/free-bootstrap-coming-soon-template-countdwon/
• DavidZydd’s Red Triangles picture: https://pixabay.com/vectors/triangle-background-abstract-color-2724449/ by DavidZydd

This week we focused on monitoring infrastructure. We decided to test an uptime monitoring solution with UptimeRobot

UptimeRobot offers a free tier account where you can set up to 50 monitors. Each monitor can perform one of the following operation: check HTTP(S) of a website, check if a keyword is present in the code of a website, ping an IP (or host), check port, or check heartbeat of a site

Then, you can specify to set the alerts to email and phone notifications. UptimeRobot also has an app on both the AppStore and GooglePlay

We have added a total of 11 monitors (different websites to check) with the goal of seeing if they go down. We will then test the ping option and the port option

More documentation available at:

https://uptimerobot.com

After a couple of years of being offline and inactive, we are making efforts to bring FridayHacks back online. We have been updating Ruby and other Jekyll dependencies and we have been able to fix some issues blocking us from posting.

We want to continue our original mission of trying out and explorining different technologies on Friday nights with the purpose of learning and discovery. We have not been consistent with this goal these past years, it is has been mainly associated with a lack of organization and planning. One of the important points to highlight is that we will try to be more organized and try to schedule sessions in advanced. We have an extensive list of projects and ideas we want to try, and we have not been able to cross any item of the list. We want to change that this year. We are excited to slowly bring this site to its full momentum and we will include livestreams in the near future.

Time to build.

In today’s hack, we decided to build an application that will help future editions of Friday Hacks. Basically, the application lets you propose projects to work on. Then, users will be able to upvote or downvote ideas and then allows to form teams to work on the best ideas.

After the hacking event is finished, projects are ranked by points. As a reward system, points could be exchanged for free working hours. For instance, after reaching enough points, it could be exchanged for a day off.

Here is the basic prototype:

It is a simple Django application with a login system, coupled with a Postgres database. There are 3 models:

• Team Model: Model for creating teams. A user joins a team.
• Project model: Model for proposed projects. A project has a team associated with it
• Rank Model: Model for reward system. Projects and teams are ranked and get points

Basic UI:

The application is still very basic and contains some minor errors. Next week, we hope to continue working on mechanical details such as

• Project and Team proposals
• Matching algorithm for projects and teams
• reddit-like upvote/downvote system for proposed projects.
• Ranking system and point allocation for projects and teams

Today, we built a slide presentation template using the Reveal.js framework. This framework is great for HTML-based presentations and it is a great hack for any technical speaker for the following reasons:

1) It is browser-based: you don’t need Power Point or Keynote to deliver your presentation (but you would need an internet connection)
2) Is is great for showing code: you can display code in a nice and concise way
3) It has an additional functionality: you can move up/down and left-right. So, you can better define the sections of your presentation
4) It is highly customizable: you can add bell and whistles or all sorts in custom css and js files.

Here is the template:

Basically, every slide is a considered a section: <section> I am a slide </section>, and then you can treat every single slide as a HTML page.