Remote working and learning can be lonely and awkward. It is hard to build strong teams and develop school spirit when nobody knows each other. Another meeting, lecture...welp that was awkward. Welp! aims to tackle this challenge with a chat and <[video call]> app that is designed to help organizations with remote operations to build open environments and team spirit. Welp! helps to prevent the isolation of remote work and study, build teams and connect people. One team, one dream!

Welp! allows organizations (typically companies or universities/colleges with large remote components) to create an account and add users. Users then receive an email allowing them to sign-up to Welp! A user can create their profile and chat with other users in their organization via text chat or <[video call]>. Welp! provides each user with chat/connect suggestions to connect people in the organization with similar interests. For the introverts in the organization they can set-up reminders to chat with others and for the extroverts there is a random chat feature that will give a random (not based on like interests) list of suggestions of potential connections.

Install and run

Back-end

The back-end of the app utilizes an express server, postgreSQL database, JWT for authentication and socket.io for chatting and <[eventually]> video calls.

To setup, from the root directory navigate to /server/ and:

• Run npm i to install dependencies
• Fill in the blank fields in the .env file (you can use the .env.example), if this doesn't already exist save a new file as '.env' in the server directory, copy paste the contents of .env.example and populate with your postgreSQL credentials and a JWT secret phrase (of your choice)
• Ensure you have a connection to a postgres database open and from the CLI run npm run dev then run npm run builddb - this will start the server and populate the database with the required tables for this project

Front-end

The front-end of the app utilizes react, tailwindcss, react-router-dom, redux for state management and socket.io for chat.

To setup, navigate to the client directory and:

• Run npm i to install dependencies
• Run npm start; this will open the app in a new a browser window/tab

Contributors