usrrname / members

TorontoJS public members directory

This repository contains the Toronto JS public members directory. This project is a work in progress and may never complete.

The idea

We're making a website hosted at https://members.torontojs.com/ at this location community members may make a profile page at for example: https://members.torontojs.com/~jen.

These pages contains some information like a name, interests (react, typescript, etc), links and job status:

• seeking
• it's complicated
• increasing shareholder value
• standalone unit
• airgapped (not working in tech)

The aesthetic

We're going for an old school terminal/bbs vibe + whimsy, similar to:

• https://adventofcode.com/
• https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/

Ideally profiles can be rendered in ANSI in a terminal. Profile pictures must therefore be ASCII art.

Profiles should be mostly monochrome (black and white or opposite), but each member may pick 1 highlight color, so every page looks a bit unique.

Creating a profile

This is a site for developers. To add your profile, you do a pull request on github. Usernames are first-come-first serve.

Future features

If we want to add more interactivity later, I think it would be fun to make most things actions developers can do, for example:

• Want to change your avatar? Use Postman to do a PUT request somewhere.
• Want to list your blog posts? Host a RSS feed somewhere
• Want to list your friends? Host a JSON file somewhere.
• What to have a Bio? Host a fingerd somewhere.

The idea is also that these have a variety of difficulty so participating with the members directory is in itself a type of challenge and a teaching moment.

A much more advanced feature might also be some intergration with the Fediverse/ActivityStreams, or parts of the Indieweb.

Tech

We're using fastify to render HTML server-side and only add frontend javascript on a case-by-case basis on pages to (ideally mostly) progressively enhance.

We use React as a template engine on the server, but try to stick to Web APIs on the front, including the use of Web Components where they make sense.

Initially we won't need a database as profiles are created from a JSON5 file, and changed via pull requests.

Running the service

npm i
npm run start:watch