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In this episode we share 2 student submitted projects: A portfolio app from Roberto Rivera, and a Pharmaceutical Web App by Kevin Nasky.
The Projects
Learn More
- Roberto's Treehouse Profile
- Kevin's Treehouse Profile
- Everyone Reads Documentation Treehouse Show
- The Beginning PHP track that Kevin used to get up to speed.
- Mobile First Layout
- Bootstrap 4 Basics which is retiring soon, but will be replaced with a refresh.
- Project Ideas
How to submit
We'd love to feature your projects on the Treehouse Show!
To share your projects with the Treehouse Show and inspire other students.
Send an email to show@teamtreehouse.com
- Your name and where you are from
- A photo of yourself and your work space
- A link to a project that you are working on, or are proud of that we can share
- And a short video introducing yourself and the project.
That video should answer these questions:
- How long have you been a Treehouse student?
- In less than 30 seconds, what is your project all about?
- What’s the biggest challenge with this project?
- What advice do you have for people trying to build something similar?
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
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Hello, and welcome to the Treehouse Show.
0:00
The Treehouse Show is a weekly
conversation with the Treehouse Community.
0:02
[SOUND] We always encourage our Treehouse
students to share their projects
0:08
to help inspire others.
0:13
Check out these two inspiring projects.
0:15
The first project that we're looking
at here is from Roberto Bobby Rivera.
0:17
Here, let's let Bobby tell you
about what his project's all about.
0:22
>> Hi, my name is Roberto Bobby Rivera and
I'm from Rochester, New York.
0:24
I've been a Treehouse student for
almost a year now.
0:29
And my project is just a portfolio.
0:32
In essence, it's just something that
I can use to put myself out there and
0:34
to kind of force updates for
the community.
0:39
So that way, they can kinda see
the things that I'm working on and
0:42
toy around with them without
having to download code and
0:46
everything like that, and provide
a nice avenue for them to review it.
0:50
>> Cool, so let's take a look
here at Roberto's portfolio site.
0:54
It's here at roberto-rivera.com.
0:59
So this is neat.
1:01
So if you can scroll down here,
1:02
you can see these other projects
that he's got working on.
1:04
Several of them,
it looks like, this is great.
1:06
And then there's a resume.
1:07
Let's see what happens
if I mouse on over here.
1:09
It tells me what's going on.
1:12
So, I can look at Giphy's API,
1:13
which is a way of connecting to
the Internet using their data.
1:16
So let's see, this is awesome, Roberto.
1:19
He's got the up on GitHub.
1:22
So I can go and look at the code,
if I were looking to hire him, which,
1:25
this is what the portfolio
site's all about, right?
1:28
I can look at the code he wrote
to do that, that's great.
1:31
So give GitHub's a nice
place to share your code.
1:33
And then also here, there's a website.
1:35
That if I click on this website here,
this is from the APIs,
1:37
from Giphy,
which is like a way of emoting yourself.
1:42
You know what a GIF is.
1:47
So he's got different things up here,
I can choose Marvel.
1:49
Cool, the superhero ones
where I could search for
1:52
a different, let's do, learn to code.
1:56
I'll do a Submit here.
1:59
Yep, that's exactly what
learning to code is like, right?
2:00
You drink some coffee, and then you
shoot rainbows out of your cat paws.
2:03
Roberto, this is awesome.
2:06
I love how fast this is loading.
2:07
This is great.
2:09
All right, let's look at another one here.
2:10
So Superhero Team up Generator,
2:12
it's a small web app inspired
by the site They Fight Crime.
2:14
So it'll do some, and
again, also on GitHub, so
2:19
I'm gonna open that up actually
real quick, let's open that up.
2:22
And we can go and
2:25
we can actually look at the code that
he's put here, which is awesome.
2:26
So we could go and
learn from this, if you want to.
2:29
So, this is great.
2:34
All right, so I'm going to flip back
over and let's open this up here.
2:36
So this is awesome.
2:43
So there's these different random
people that they fight together.
2:44
Awesome work, Roberto,
this is really neat.
2:48
Let's flip back to the portfolio.
2:52
And he's got lots of
contact information here.
2:56
This is great, this is wonderful.
2:59
We asked Roberto to share some
of the challenges that he
3:00
encountered making this site.
3:03
>> Now, one of the biggest challenges
that I had was something like this,
3:04
was to get the lightbox to also work
really well with the mobile versions,
3:08
and to not kind of not clutter up
the screen with too much information.
3:14
>> Well, good job thinking about
the phone version, Roberto.
3:18
A lot of people don't think about this,
but,
3:21
more than half of the Internet
now uses the Internet on a phone.
3:24
So let's take a look at what
your site looks on the phone.
3:27
So, this is great, it's nice.
3:30
It's one column now, before it was
in two columns when it goes across.
3:32
And if I click on one of these,
the pop up comes,
3:35
there's the pop up he's talking about.
3:37
And I can go to either the site or
whatever.
3:38
And if I click in there,
he's also done a good job on this one.
3:40
And this one fits very
nicely on the phone.
3:43
Great job.
3:45
We asked Roberto to share some advice
to other people who might be building
3:47
a portfolio site like this one.
3:50
>> Now, any advice that I would have for
the community in the future would just be,
3:52
if you're gonna build something like this,
keep in mind that you yourself are a user.
3:55
So while you're building this for others
to be able to review it later on, keep in
4:01
mind that you also have to keep your code
and the design modular enough to accept
4:05
new projects without having to rebuild
an entire website each and every time.
4:11
>> Keeping it modular is a great advice,
Roberto.
4:16
In fact, I think that's great for
about all coding.
4:18
I mean, you are going to make more
projects than this, I can tell.
4:20
You are on your way to make more and
more projects.
4:23
And now you have a place to put
these in here, it's awesome.
4:25
So one thing that I did
notice that struck out to me,
4:27
you've done a really good job of
making the different media sizes.
4:30
These images look a little
bit squished when they're on
4:34
this version that I'm looking at.
4:36
It's a little bit shrunken than normal.
4:38
So I'm gonna watch this, the image there,
if i bring this in a little bit,
4:40
you'll see that they popped
into the right thing.
4:44
So I think there is just
something about the media thing.
4:46
Do not fixate on this Roberto,
I just wanted to point that out.
4:48
This looks great and
you're doing awesome work.
4:52
Thanks for sharing and
inspiring other students.
4:54
Next up,
we have Kevin Nasky from Cleveland Ohio.
4:57
Tell us about your project, Kevin.
5:00
>> Hello, so I've been a Treehouse student
since February 2017, so, seven months now.
5:02
My project is called
psychopharmacopeia.com.
5:08
It's a searchable online psychiatric
drug database aimed at people like me,
5:12
clinicians who prescribe psychiatric meds.
5:17
Unlike a lot of its, I guess, competitors,
comprehensive online medical references,
5:21
they're essentially big
digitized textbooks.
5:26
This site gives its users a quick,
kind of a flashcard style,
5:29
just the facts MIM breakdown
of each medication.
5:35
The kind of stuff that I'm
always looking for and
5:41
I think most of colleagues are too.
5:44
There's some other little critical tools
in there like dose conversion calculators
5:46
and things that
are integrated into the site.
5:50
>> This is an awesome site.
5:53
I love there's a slogan here,
this is nice and catchy.
5:54
It gets the information that you're
looking for, it's that easy, that's great.
5:57
So let's see,
what drug am I interested in?
6:00
It's fall right now, so I am going
to start popping some Benadryls.
6:02
So let's take a look at what's
going on with Benadryls.
6:07
Wow, that was so quick.
6:09
All right, so it looks like it
takes care of Parkinsonism, and
6:11
side effects includes sedation/somnolence,
dizziness, confusion, ataxia.
6:16
This is great, I think.
6:22
I don't know much about medicine and
I can't say that this is all right.
6:24
But I'm trusting what you do there.
6:28
And in fact, I think maybe a warning.
6:29
Do you have a warning here at the bottom?
6:31
I would suggest a warning
there at the bottom.
6:34
So you've been doing this on Treehouse for
seven months?
6:36
This is pretty impressive, Kevin, here.
6:40
So there's other tools here too.
6:42
He's got this drug index,
6:43
awesome organization here to find the
different things that you're looking for.
6:45
And you can, click into them and
they go across, and different brands,
6:50
brand based ones, and there's generic.
6:54
This is really powerful.
6:57
There's calculators and converters.
6:59
So we asked Kevin to tell us some of
the challenges that he encountered
7:02
building this site.
7:05
>> So I probably struggled
the most in the beginning.
7:06
Before Treehouse, I had a couple
false starts with just getting books,
7:09
bringing them home on PHP and
MySQL and got overwhelmed and gave up.
7:12
I definitely stumbled a bit in the
beginning just getting that first database
7:19
connection with PHP, getting the tables
joined correctly in the queries,
7:24
getting the PDO to fetch
the array results.
7:30
But once I got that first connection
established and was able to query
7:34
what I wanted,
it was pretty smooth process after that.
7:39
I took the advice of a friend and
used Bootstrap for the front end side.
7:44
And so that was light years
easier than the back end for me.
7:50
>> You're right, Kevin, learning
with books can be intimidating and
7:55
a little bit boring, and
that's what we used to have to do.
7:58
But I'm so glad that you found us,
cuz we can be interactive with you and
8:01
you can help build things along with that.
8:04
And I am also so
glad that you found Bootstrap.
8:05
I have used that so much to save my life.
8:08
Because it gives you a nice
front end framework, and
8:11
it does the nice clicking nits bits.
8:13
So, if I come over here
to one of your pages,
8:15
I kinda, I can just go ahead,
and it's gonna be responsive.
8:18
I know it's going to be
because you used Bootstrap.
8:22
So if I come, and I can do that, it will
pop into the nice categories for me there.
8:25
If I do that on the site,
it will come out.
8:31
And you could see the hamburger
menu pops in here?
8:32
That's all Bootstrap, awesome.
8:34
The last thing we always ask,
we asked Kevin,
8:36
what advice would you have to students
trying to build a similar product?
8:39
>> So advice, I said, for somebody like me
with not real programming background, but
8:43
a good idea of a project you wanna do,
I say, first of all, use Treehouse,
8:49
the instructors are great.
8:53
I love the format,
I love having short five, six-minute
8:55
kinda lectures broken up with quizzes and
9:00
exercises that kind of reinforce
what you just learned.
9:06
I'm using HTML but
it was nice to have that review.
9:12
I jumped into the beginner PHP track.
9:16
And really I got about halfway,
two-thirds of the way through it, and
9:18
knew enough to at least accomplish
what I needed for this site.
9:23
So, I say, if you have a project idea, and
9:27
you have an idea of what you
need to learn, start that track.
9:31
And probably within a week or so,
well, at least this was my experience,
9:36
you're gonna be able to start,
start your project.
9:41
And then, like I did kinda
simultaneously work your way
9:43
through the track while you're
developing your project.
9:47
I think you'll surprise yourself
how quickly you'll progress and
9:51
it's been a lot of fun.
9:57
And I'm proud to have written
every line of code for this site.
9:59
I almost tapped out and
hire a programmer to do it for me,
10:06
but it feels good to have done it myself.
10:10
So good luck to you.
10:14
>> Kevin, so
glad that you found Treehouse.
10:15
And I love hearing stories like that.
10:17
You had this idea, and you found us,
and you went along with it.
10:19
You didn't even need to finish the track.
10:22
And I love that you dived in.
10:23
And you started making stuff
as you were doing the track.
10:24
Now some students come, and
one of the biggest hurdles for
10:27
students is that they
don't know where to start.
10:30
So we put some links in the teacher's
notes if that's a problem that you
10:32
might be having.
10:34
Kevin, again, thanks so
much for being on the show.
10:35
[SOUND] So thanks again for
being on the show, Kevin and Roberto.
10:39
We've sent you some schwag and
thank you for helping inspire people.
10:47
Now, if you would like to help inspire
people, please reach out to us at
10:51
show@teamtreehouse and
we'll get you on the show.
10:55
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