🔦 Community Spotlight - Building Idea Xchange, a Networking App🔦
Published: 2023-05-11 16:26:58

**_Highlighting projects from the Appwrite community_**


## Introduction

With Appwrite’s developer community growing significantly, we want to take the time to appreciate and showcase some amazing applications built by our community. Maybe you’ll be inspired by these projects to build something amazing with Appwrite, too!

This month, we’d like to give the spotlight to Apoorv, who built a successful app called Idea Xchange. Let’s get started by interviewing them to learn more about their project and journey. 

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## Tell us more about who you are
Hi, I’m Apoorv Dwivedi. I’m a FullStack Engineer and I love to explore new tech and tools available in the market. I’ve won multiple national and international hackathons like Smart India Hackathon 2022 and Unesco India Africa Hackathon 2022. I was a GitHub Extern for Winter ‘22 with Symbl.ai and an MLH Fellow for Summer ‘22 with Solana Labs under Metaplex as well.

You can find and connect with me on the below socials:
1. [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Apoorvdwi)
2. [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/apoorvdwi)
3. [GitHub](https://github.com/apoorvdwi)
4. [Portfolio](https://apoorvdwivedi.live/)

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## What is the name of the project you built?

Idea Xchange

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## Why did you decide to build this? What inspired you?
I wanted to start my new year i.e. 2023 by exploring some new technology or a new development tool. With all the community and hype around Appwrite, it became an obvious choice. I decided to build this product since a lot of people struggle with finding ideas for their resume projects and college projects. On the other hand, people struggle with getting their idea validated by people to check if the product they are thinking of is actually required or not. This is the main reason I thought of building this product that connects both worlds.

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## What is the Idea Xchange?
Idea Exchange is a platform for people who have trouble finding ideas for their side projects or are finding a business problem to solve and build their startup. Alternatively, people can post their ideas/problem statements and let other users interact with the idea in form of comments, upvotes, downvotes, and if they would like to pay for the product around that problem/idea statement.

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## What technologies did you use to create it and how did you use each technology?

I built the frontend using Next JS and Chakra UI. I built the backend and authentication using Appwrite running on the Digital Ocean droplet.

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## Who is your target audience and how will it help them to learn more about your project?

The target audience is mainly students and working professionals who search for ideas for their side projects, startup, or college project as well as people who have an idea and struggle to get their idea validated by the people if it is actually useful and if people would pay for it.

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## What issues did you run into while building this project and how did you solve them?

It took me some time to think about the color palette, the website design, and getting the Appwrite instance successfully running over the DIgitalOcean droplet, setting up the SSL correctly, and getting it to the correct subdomain.

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## How did Appwrite help your project?
Appwrite seamlessly managed all the backend tasks from authentication, data storage, and generating an SSL certificate. It is a really efficient backend solution and the documentation is pretty concise and well-written as well.

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## What are a couple of things you wish you knew before starting the project? 

I hope I knew how to set up SSL correctly since it took me a lot of time to get HTTPS running the Appwrite droplet and getting it to point to the correct sub-domain. Other than this, I didn't find any major problem and for all small issues, Appwrite documentation is more than enough and pretty resourceful.

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## Anything else you'd like to share?

You can have a look over my project at https://ideaxchange.space

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## Where can others find your app?

Link to the app - https://ideaxchange.space

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## Please share screenshots of your project

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/0xnbh8woxmk45097by60.png)


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/1c3hjd1s6tk6pvc24g83.png)


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/r9ue077rqwfvwmdb06j9.png)