Whey Cartel
WheyCartel is a SPA( single page application) premium whey protein subscription service, which was built with React, Bootstrap, Python, BrainTree, Node, Firebase, and more. I worked with WheyCartel as a Front End Development intern for about 3 months, shortly after graduating from Enspiral Dev Academy. I couldn't say better things about my experience working with Nelson and Rab, the founders of the site. They gave me an opportunity to jump into the team right away, and continue to learn and grow in a professional environment.
Despite me being an intern, Nelson, our head of development, put me in charge of quite a bit right away. This was a great chance for me to stretch my skills, knowing that help was right around the corner if need be. A few of the things I accomplished for the WheyCartel are listed in the bullet points below.
- Technical accomplishment's
- I was put in charge of creating a complete user dashboard from Photoshop documents, where users could view their current subscription and billing information, and make changes to their account.
- We used modern web technologies to build our application, so we needed to do browser testing to get a better picture of what our users could look forward to. I tested the site across all modern browsers(Chrome, Firefox) and a litany of different devices, screen sizes, and mobile browsers. It even works on IE9
- We used Git as source control when I was in school, and we also used it for the development of the WheyCartel platform. This made it easy for me to submit my features and code for peer review, which lead to almost eliminated creating new bugs in the production environment.
- As part of following the agile process, we were constantly updating, and using a prioritised backlog. This was great for the team, since our lead dev and myself could create new tickets when we came across bugs or other tasks, and the whole team could see what was being worked on, and what was already finished.
- When it came to data storage, particularly in the case of the user dashboard, we needed easily accessible and fast storage. Firebase fit all of our needs with its easy to use API, and connection to the rest of the google suite.
- Feel free to visit the site by clicking on the link above.
- Challenges and take away
- This was my first professional role, and that scared the hell out of me. I was lucky that Nelson and Rab were great mentors, and willing to help me learn and grow, which has boosted my confidence and prepared me for my next role.
- Since this is a start-up, the dev team was just myself and one of the founders. While this presented certain challenge's (wearing many hats) it also made communication and code reviews very easy.
- I did most of our device and browser testing, and getting the CSS and forms to look nice and behave the same across differnt platform's was a challenge in and of it's self.
- Communicating with our backend was a bit of a challenge because Nelson (our lead dev) had written it in Python and Brain Tree, which i had no experience with at the time. Working with a new technology helped boost my skill set, and problem solving skills.
- I used Firebase for the first time during my stay with Whey Cartel, and had to spend time outsite of work to help me understand what I needed to do while at the office.
