What it is

Project Success is a new joint initiative between the Beach Center on Disability and the Center for Research on Learning (both housed at the University of Kansas) to improving school performance for kids in special education. The website collects and promotes learning resources identified by project staff to assist these students, their parents, teachers, and school administrators.

What I did

For this site, I developed the end-user interface for browsing and searching resources, and for registering to attend live events hosted by Project Success (though implemented, this feature is not yet being used as of this writing). I designed the layout and chose a basic color scheme based on a logo provided to me. A backend interface is in place for project staff to add new resources, with a simple approval system in place to allow staff to OK resources for sharing. Underneath that I did the application and database work and set up a dedicated virtual private server for the project.

Tools I used

Rails 3 for a web application framework. Devise and CanCan for authentication and authorization. RSpec 2 with Factory Girl, Webrat, and Autotest for testing. MetaSearch for search. Ancestry for hierarchical browsing. FriendlyId for pretty URLs. Transitions for resource state (pending, approved, rejected). Paperclip for image uploads. A little bit of JQuery. Haml and Sass for markup. The 1Kb CSS Grid. Capistrano for deployment.