Skillflow: A Mentoring Website Share: AddWeb Solution Score Awaiting client review n/a Date Published 3 January 2022 Reading Time 5-Minute Read Skillflow is just another place over the internet, where you find teachers, mentors — outside the institution that you call ‘school’. “Are any of us self-taught? It just means I didn’t go to school for it. But you do have teachers. You have mentors.” — Richard Linklater Skillflow is a place where you can find teachers and mentors outside the institution that you call ‘school’. It’s a website where mentors, mentees, and organizations come together for mentoring and getting mentored for achieving both personal and professional goals. About Skillflow One can register self for free on this online platform and get the benefits of mentoring, be it on a personal front or professional. After registration, the mentor defines a few goals/tasks for the mentee, which he/she works upon and accordingly gets scores on the completed goals/tasks. Realizing the true potential in an individual and then bringing it into the function is the fundamental being of Skillflow. And AddWeb Solution as a team is proud of being the creator of their website with altogether a novel perspective. Why Drupal was chosen Drupal was chosen on the very first day for building Skillflow. Drupal’s nature of API framework, high-level security, user relationships, content authoring experience, workflow, user-friendliness, the scope of optimization and scalability were reasons enough to pick it for a website as profound as Skillflow is. Also, it did not want to limit the website in any possible aspect, since its users and features were going to grow extensively in the coming days. And hence Drupal has been the sole consideration for Skillflow’s website. Project Goals In one sentence, the fundamental goal was to transform the entire idea of connecting individuals that helps them realize their potential and meet their goals in one single website. And we’re on our toes to make it real! Requirements On the technical front, we had a list full of requirements to be met in the most efficient manner. Here is the list of all the prominent requirements, apart from the sub-sections to each of them. Crowd-funding (kickstart) Multiple Profiles Stripe Payment Marketplace Community Website Dashboard Landing page Video Integration Multiple Customizable Email Templates Interactive Graphs Group Module Social Media Login & Integration Apart from this, the website was also required to be responsive and to be hosted on Acquia, which was a practice that we usually preferred to follow at AddWeb for any Drupal-based website. Challenges Every path of any project reaches its destination without any obstacles. Skillflow too had its share of challenges and thanks to our sensible and skilled team, which overcame the challenges like a pro! Yet, it is always a good idea to keep in mind and share a bunch of challenges in order to keep the learnings in mind, forever. Here’re the challenges that we came across during the project and successfully came through them: Role-based access and relationship Competitions Statistics Video calling to mentor and Circle of Skillflow Coins and Credit (Video calling) Reflecting user-based timezone Outcome Challenges challenge us to outshine than before. The same thing happened in this particular project of Skillflow too. Just as we started working on the major challenges, we got to earn new lessons. Having achieved each of the desired features of the client, we also ornamented the site with the below mentioned, noticeable features: Site accessible via membership only Goals/tasks have a specific time-frame The process of finding a mentor/mentee is easy Private messaging option A protean notification feature Custom API Development Mentor suggestion feature Option to buy get free credits Followers feature on each registered member Plan the upgrade for an increasing number of mentors Lounge and Forum access for each registered member Level update feature for members Ratings of the members Filter feature for the goal page Technical specifications Drupal version: Drupal 7.x Key modules/theme/distributions used: Commerce Core Domain Entity API LoginToboggan Privatemsg Services Views (for Drupal 7) User Points Organic groups Why these modules/theme/distributions were chosen: Commerce+ helper modules: For creating a multi-featured and powerful website just as an e-commerce one Domain Access: For providing tools to run a group of affiliated sites from one Drupal installation and a single shared database Entity + helper module: Use the API of Drupal to create a unified way to deal with entities and their properties Loggintoboggan: For making several modifications in the Drupal login system in an external module Private message: For making private messaging possible between the registered users Services: For creating a standardized solution for building APIs to let the external clients communicate with Drupal Views + helper modules: For creating a structural display with filters and orders User points: For creating an API that helps the user gain/lose points on the basis of their performance Forum module: For letting the user discuss mentor, mentee and corporate launch