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Post-It Note App

Here are examples of a post-it note application you can use for inspiration:

  • Pinup: Sticky notes, corkboards, collaboration
  • Note.ly: Online Sticky Notes

Here are resources that you can use to build your post-it note application:

00:00 Post-it Note Application. It’s human to have many thoughts and ideas in a day, but unfortunately, it’s also just as human to forget them. One way to work around forgetting things is to jot them down before they disappear into thin air. While some of our forgotten thoughts and ideas may be trivial, some of them can be powerful and useful.

00:17 This is where post-it notes often come in. As you know, post-it notes are a small piece of paper with a low tack adhesive at the back, making it attachable to surfaces such as documents and walls, pieces of furniture—pretty much anything. Post-it notes make it easier to jot things down and easy to remember them.

00:34 The post-it note project idea is something similar. It allows users to jot things down, making them accessible anywhere, as it’s a web application. With the post-it note app, people can now jot things down anywhere without the fear of forgetting things or misplacing the notes, which is a real possibility with physical notes.

00:52 Let’s take a look at a couple of sites which already implement this kind of functionality. Here, you can see Pinup.com, which is implemented as a corkboard with post-its that can be placed on there.

01:03 Once you’ve signed in, you can create post-it notes and save and share them.

01:08 Here, you can see note.ly, which is arranged—much like the previous site—as a corkboard with yellow post-it notes on by default. note.ly is a little bit different as you can create notes without signing in, but to save them, you’ll need to sign up and log in.

01:23 Let’s take a look at some of the technical challenges you’ll face when creating your post-it note application. Firstly, user accounts. This is whether they’re built into the web framework you’re using—such as django—or custom-made. Unless the site is to be only for a single user, then the creation of user accounts will be fundamental to the site’s operation.

01:43 django comes with user accounts built-in and could be easily extended. You can, of course, use a custom-made user model, whether you’re using django or another web framework.

01:53 But remember that there is a great deal to create for user accounts to be fully featured and functional, and you need to take security concerns into account.

02:02 Secondly, creation of categories. Categories for your notes will be important and a fundamental part of the structure of not only the site, but also the underlying database. Remember, you may need to store more than just text for your notes to be useful.

02:17 Third, display format. There are many options for how your notes will be displayed, and spending time becoming familiar with CSS styling will probably be unavoidable, even if you start out by making use of frameworks such as Bootstrap or Semantic UI.

02:32 Now, let’s take a look at some of the extra challenges you may want to take on after your basic post-it note app is completed. Firstly, custom appearance. Once you’ve mastered the display formatting, being able to offer customization of appearance will be the next step. Much of what you learned when initially formatting your project’s content will be of use here. Secondly, reminders and snooze. Being able to offer timed reminders on notes will be a useful addition to the functionality of your note application.

03:02 Integrating a notification API such as Pushbullet will allow users to be reminded even when they aren’t using the app.

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