I was building a social media platform for newly created creators and anyone who wants a simple place to post and make a community or an indie page for growing. Crowdwide has an algorithm for that, which shows posts and things according to the interests of the user, and with its design, new people in a larger community get a chance to grow faster!!
So I think the audience of Crowdwide should be mostly developers, students, or normal people (maybe less common but possible).
So I have worked on the suggestions I got!
I got the suggestion to use the 4/8/16/24 spacing scale consistently. I added that to the UI.
Suggested by Nilamadhab Senapati
I made that change, and it works! It makes the UI better.
Secondly, the major things were pointed out by someone great:
Simulate a timeout/server error and verify rollback to a retryable draft.
Submit twice while the first request is pending and verify that only one post is created.
Return two edit responses out of order and make sure the older response cannot overwrite newer text or clear its pending state.
Suggested by Dave Kurian for the failed requests and duplicate submissions, and Marcus Kim for the out-of-order edit responses.
So basically, I tested what happens when a post request fails, made sure submitting twice doesn't create duplicate posts, and checked that older edit requests don't overwrite newer changes. These were some important things because even if the UI looks good, the actual functionality also needs to work properly!!
Further, I was just going to be done, but I got more things to add to my todo list, and I wanted to reach the saturation level of making this project!!
So I just worked on it and shipped these too:
Removed unnecessary labels while keeping accessible names on interactive elements.
Hid decorative icons from screen readers where appropriate and used empty alt text for decorative images.
Made meaningful status indicators readable, like “Post: Active” or “Community: Pending”.
Preserved useful status and hint information without making screen reader announcements unnecessarily noisy.
Tested keyboard navigation and screen reader announcements.
Fixed repeated accessibility problems in shared components instead of patching every page individually.
Suggested by Odinaka Robert Nnamani
Basically, I cleaned up the accessibility too!! I made sure unnecessary labels and decorative icons don't create noise for screen readers, while meaningful information is still available. I also checked keyboard navigation and screen reader announcements, and fixed shared components wherever the same issue appeared across multiple pages.
And that's it! I have made huge changes to it!!
Finally, it feels like there will be nothing more to do!!
But still, one thing to think about...
Who is Crowdwide for?
Like, which kind of audience or people will use it??
Like, I made it, and I know what its algorithm does... but it's still not possible to be sure who will use Crowdwide.
Its algorithm is made for growing new voices while keeping the content relevant and engaging!
So what is it for? ... Is this the hardest question after building any solo project??
Because I still haven't got a proper number of users or an answer to figure it out properly!
Links:
Crowdwide: https://www.crowdwide.run.place
GitHub repository: https://github.com/DeveloperPuneet/Crowdwide
Top comments (2)
Do what you actually work with or what you need day-to-day, that's it. You're not the only one—I experimented, figured out how everything works, and moved on...) But I never had the goal of building something for someone else... Right now, I just fix the things I need at the moment: I grab projects from GitHub and tweak them wherever I see what's missing or where there are problems).
Yeah, I get your point! Honestly, I started building Crowdwide because I wanted to create something that gives smaller creators and communities a chance to grow. I know it's a lot of work, and sometimes I wonder if I'm doing too much But I enjoy building it, and I want to see how far I can take it. Thanks for sharing your experience! 🤝