Description as a Tweet:

Ever made a connection, but don't have a business card on hand? With our new website, you can now post your business card for all to see online! Just flash your newly generated QRCode of your business card to anyone and exponentially grow your social circle!

Inspiration:

My friends and I were eating dinner at worcester dining hall, when suddenly some alumni asked if they could sit next to us as the tables around us were full. We struck up an amazing conversation about jobs, life after college, and some tips for the future. My friends and I decided to leave and said goodbye, and as we were walking back to our dorms we noticed we forgot to exchange contact information. That's when this idea came into our minds, a website that would allow for this exchange to happen in a split second.

What it does:

It turns your business card into a QRCode, and stores that QRCode onto the site. You can logon to the site whenever and retrieve your QR code to share. You must first obtain a non-local image url and paste it into 'digQR'. Then save that QR image that was generated for you, and then upload it into the 'UPLOAD' tab. The QR code would be saved into a database using AWS RDS. You can access your QR codes (new and old) at the 'STORAGE' tab.
WARNING: the uploaded image must be a web-based image and cannot have a local url.

How we built it:

We split up the project 3 ways, one person worked on site design and HTML, another person worked on creating and getting a database online, and the last person floated around doing parts of both.

Technologies we used:

HTML/CSS
Javascript
PHP
SQL
Misc

Challenges we ran into:

This was the first time any of us really dove deep into html. Most of us had little understanding regarding front-end development, and so when we took on this project, there was a huge learning curve. We learned how to use HTML/CSS properly, looked into useful technologies such as bootstrap, etc. We also implemented local hosting through the usage of XAMPP Control,

Accomplishments we're proud of:

We built a functioning website with working login/password, a connected database, a profile page, and submitted a final product on time.

What we've learned:

Besides the new languages we picked up, such as PHP and HTML, we also learned how hard it is to front-end-develop. We spent hours trying to understand code examples, and even more time debugging our own code.

What's next:

Our current project is not fullly automated. Users still have to make sure that the Business Card already exists online and not only locally, and must manually download a picture of the QRCode and then once again upload it onto the website. This process is very inconvenient and inefficient, and we'd like to make this smooth and effortless. Originally we also intended to make this a mobile app, but due to restraints in knowledge we stuck with the website. An app would bring out the full potential of the concept and makes more sense than a website.

Built with:

We used bootstrap for templates and formatting, MySQL for the database, AWS for hosting the Database, XAMPP Control and Alpha for local hosting, Microsoft Visual Studio Code for programming.

Digital Card