Social network for strength training

I created a convenient workout journal in the form of a social platform. Hobbyist open-source project.

The source code is available on my Github.

About the site

Hermes is a social network for tracking your workouts. It shares your results with your friends. I have been adding features that I found useful for myself, for example: exercise PRs, visualizing progress with data visualisations.

I have created the website as a hobby project. After some refining I used it as my main workout diary. Testers enjoyed using it as well. I took care of the project from A to Z - design, UX testing, programming, adding data, ensuring stability.

Technology stack

PHP 7, MySQL - backend JS (ES6), Vue - frontend

There are a few reasons for the technology stack used:

• Low maintenance costs of the project. The current VPS I use (shout out to mikr.us) has only 256 MB of ram, 1 core and slow I/O - despite this Hermes runs fast. I was considering node.js, but I wasn’t sure if the server would handle it (in the past I had to use tricks to barely enable npm). The project didn’t have enough users for me to consider an additional server as a worthwhile expense.
• Practical learning of design patterns. I consciously did not choose an existing framework and create my own on the fly. Had I worked on an existing one, I would have had fewer places to make mistakes. I would write mostly business logic and not worry about things that the framework takes care of. That’s not fun in a hobby project! Here, if I misdesign an element (architecture, project structure, deployment, etc.), I am forced to notice the error and fix it.
• Creating a refined design. Using familiar languages and technologies allows me to develop the site faster. Also, it deepens my knowledge and familiarity with the technologies used.
• Using Hermes on both phones (Android, iOS) and desktops. I decided to develop the site without a native app, as the effort required is disproportionate to the results. In the current model, the new functionality is available immediately on all platforms. I recovered some of the native functionality by turning the site into an app through GoNative. It added smooth transitions between subpages, non-logging, native prompts, among other things.