Critiq Web App

In the fall of 2019, I worked with two other students to create Critiq, a web application designed for posting and reviewing writing — specifically for works of original fiction and poetry. While many such websites exist, such as Wattpad, Inkitt, and Scribophile, few are geared towards critique, and those that are geared towards critique tend to be locked behind paywalls. The intent behind this site was to create an open platform for users to share their writing and gain critique with as little bias as possible.

Users can access the site only by logging in, as we wish to protect people’s stories from non-users. Each user additionally has a profile, which displays all of their stories, for ease of use. If a user views their own profile, they also have an option to set preferences for the kinds of work they enjoy or wish to avoid, setting up a content filter that will manage all interactions between the user and the site.

Full documentation can be found here. My part of the project focused on the login and account creation process and on allowing users to add comments to stories and to rate finished works using a five-star Ajax-enabled system. I also worked on setting up user profiles, marking in-progress works as finished, and did most of the user interface coding and design (this was not the focus of the project, but I did make time to create the logo from scratch). The main app was written using Python's Flask library, with HTML and CSS using Jinja2 and Bootstrap, along with JavaScript and JQuery. The code can be found on my GitHub.