askDVC

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Project Background
3. Contributor Guide

Overview

askDVC is a website for students to ask questions, provide answers and, make life a little easier for each other. The idea is to have a central place where students can come to ask questions about their classes, teachers, and life as a student at large.

Whether it's questions about which professor to take, how manageable 20 credits in a semester is, where the best place on campus to study is, or advice on making friends - askDVC aims to create a place where knowledge is pooled, and student's can share their experiences.

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Project Background

askDVC was built over 4 weeks in the Spring of 2025 as part of Project Bracket at Diablo Valley College.

Tech Stack

• Django: The project is written in Python using the Django web framework.

• HTMX: A lightweight JavaScript library that extends HTML attributes, allowing us to build a modern, interactive UI without writing lots of JavaScript.

• Bootstrap: The UI is built with the Bootstrap toolkit, with theming provided by Bootswatch.

• SQLite: The database is currently SQLite, although we plan on migrating to Postgres.

Team Members

Aanya

Github: @FlyHighStem

Conor Ney

Github: @deuxcoast

Jordan Racher

Github: @jayracher

Karen Zhao

Github: @karen2zhao

Matthew Aguirre

Github: @mattag1234

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Contributor Guide

Instructions for setting up the project

All of these commands should be run from a terminal in the base directory of the project. After cloning the project, we should cd into the repository.

Warning

These commands are for zsh/bsh shells, which should work for most MacOS and Linux users. For Windows users the commands below may be different.

Initial Setup (first time only)

1. Clone the project. To do this, cd into the directory you want the project to be stored in, then run the following command:

   git clone https://github.com/deuxcoast/ask-dvc.git

2. cd into the directory we just downloaded, this is where all of the project files are.

   cd ask-dvc

3. Create a virtual environment.

   python3 -m venv .venv

4. Activate the virtual environment

   source .venv/bin/activate

5. Download the dependencies required to run the project, as listed in the requirements.txt file.

   pip install -r requirements.txt

6. Create and run the migrations necessary to bring the database up to the correct state.

   python manage.py makemigrations python manage.py migrate

7. Spin up the development server and get going! python manage.py runserver

Running the Project After Initial Setup

The initial setup above is only required once. From there on out the only steps that are required are ensuring that the python virtual environment has been activated, and that the development server is running.

This can be done by opening a terminal in the base directory of the project and running the following commands:

1. Activate the virtual enviornment.

source .venv/bin/activate

2. Spin up the development server.

python manage.py runserver

Documentation for most of the commands above pertaining to virtual environments can be found here, and documentation for the Django commands can be found here.