OpenCrisisBoard

OpenCrisisBoard (OCB) is a lightweight forum application based on ReForum that enables social-backed, accesssible, long-form and short-form communication around crisis-related topics. OpenCrisisBoard is most useful when deployed in small communities, supported by local government as administrators and moderators. It allows users to log in with verified social media accounts to have meaningful discussions around relevant topics, in addition to offering services such as volunteering.

Application Features

Users can log in with verified social accounts (Facebook and Twitter only, no email or account sign up allowed for social proof reasons)
Users can post a discussion
Users can reply their opinions regarding discussion
Users can favorite discussions
Users have their own profile page
Admin can create new forum categories
Admins have a lot of power over every users discussions and opinions

Documentations

New Discussions

Unlimited Boards

Login with Facebook or Twitter (It attaches to your post to avoid spread of misinformation)

Admin View (Forum Board Creation/Deletion)

Deploy with Heroku

In order to deploy to Heroku you will need to create a Heroku account, during deployment you will be prompted for a series of keys:

To add map functionality you will need to obtain keys from Google (this is the only required key needed to deploy)

Google Developer Portal

To have social login you will also need keys for Twitter and/or Facebook and/or Github:

We need to grab the following information from the application.

Client ID
Client Secret
Callback URL

The Callback URL is the domain where Twitter or Facebook or Github will redirect the user after a successful login. You can use a domain name or local host. But we need to append the URL with the path /api/user/authViaTwitter/callback or /api/user/authViaFacebook/callback.

So, the complete url will look like: https://TheNameOfYourApp.herokuapp.com/api/user/authViaTwitter/callback or https://TheNameOfYourApp.herokuapp.com/api/user/authViaFacebook/callback or https://TheNameOfYourApp.herokuapp.com/api/user/authViaGitHub/callback

Deploy via Docker

The entire application is built to deploy with docker compose, you can edit all of the below environment variables in the file docker-compose.yml. The file looks like this:

version: "2"
services:
  web:
    build: .
    ports:
    - "8080:8080"
    depends_on:
    - mongo
    environment:
    - PORT=3030
    - DBURL=mongodb://localhost:27017/OpenCrisisBoard'
    - FB_APPID=[FB APP ID HERE]
    - FB_CBURL=[FB CALLBACK URL HERE]
    - FB_SECRET=[FB SECRET HERE]
    - TW_APPID=[TWITTER APP ID HERE]
    - TW_CBURL=[TWITTER CALLBACK URL HERE]
    - TW_SECRET=[TWITTER SECRET HERE]
    - GH_APPID=[GITHUB APP ID HERE]
    - GH_CBURL=[GITHUB CALLBACK URL HERE]
    - GH_SECRET=[GITHUB SECRET HERE]
    - MAP_KEY=[GOOGLE MAPS KEY HERE]
  mongo:
    image: mongo
    ports:
    - "27017:27017"

If you are already running mongodb, simply remove the mongo: section and expose the port mongo is running on to 27017 on the image:

ports:
    - "27017:27017"

Then once you're all setup, simply run docker-compose up to launch the full forum

Deploy on you own server

Please make sure you have following software installed in your system:

Node.js > 6.0
NPM / Yarn
Git
MongoDB

First we need to clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/crisisboard/opencrisisboard

Then we have to install the necessary dependencies using either NPM or Yarn:

$ npm i

$ yarn

Since the app currently uses Twitter and Facebook authentication, we need to configure a Twitter and Facebook application and/or GitHub. You can register a new application from these links:

Twitter Developer Portal

Facebook Developer Portal

GitHub Developer Portal

We need to grab the following information from the application.

Client ID
Client Secret
Callback URL

The Callback URL is the domain where Twitter or Facebook will redirect the user after a successful login. You can use a domain name or local host. But we need to append the URL with the path /api/user/authViaTwitter/callback or /api/user/authViaFacebook/callback. So, the complete url will look like: https://localhost:8080/api/user/authViaTwitter/callback or https://localhost:8080/api/user/authViaFacebook/callback

Additionally to add map functionality you will need to obtain keys from Google (this is the only required key needed to deploy)

Google Developer Portal

Now, we need to configure the credentials inside of the codebase. You can either edit the credentials file directly in config/credentials.js or add the details to your environment variables when you run the application:

module.exports = {
  DBURL : process.env.DBURL_URI || process.env.DBURL || 'mongodb://localhost:27017/reforum',

  // facebook details
  FB_APPID : [FB APP ID HERE],
  FB_CBURL : [FB CALLBACK URL HERE],
  FB_FIELDS : ['id', 'displayName', 'picture.type(large)', 'email', 'birthday', 'friends', 'first_name', 'last_name', 'middle_name', 'gender', 'link'],
  FB_SECRET : [FB SECRET HERE],

  // twitter details
  TW_APPID : [TWITTER APP ID HERE],
  TW_CBURL : [TWITTER CALLBACK URL HERE],
  TW_SECRET : [TWITTER SECRET HERE],

  // github details
  GH_APPID : [GITHUB APP ID HERE],
  GH_CBURL : [GITHUB CALLBACK URL HERE],
  GH_SECRET : [GITHUB SECRET HERE],

  MAP_KEY : [GOOGLE MAPS KEY HERE]
};

FB_APPID='[FB APP ID HERE]' FB_SECRET='[FB SECRET HERE]' FB_CBURL='[FB CALLBACK URL HERE]' npm run start:dev

We need to provide all the information here. You can notice that we need the database url here too. My local MongoDB url looks like:

mongodb://localhost:27017/OpenCrisisBoard

Now we are ready to run the application. You can run either run the development environment of the application which will include Hot-Reload for JS codes using Webpack and the Redux dev tool extension, or you can run the production edition. The default port for developer edition is 3030, and for production is process.env.PORT.

To run the app in development environment:

$ PORT=3030 npm run start:dev

To run the app in production environment:

$ PORT=3030 npm run start

Now, if you visit http://localhost:3030 (if you ran the dev), or the production URL, you will see that the application is up and running. Congratulation! But, wait a minute, it's showing you Sorry, couldn't find the forum. That is because, we didn't create any forum yet. You can now sign up via github and then visit the admin panel with the url http://localhost:3030/admin. The application is currently configured in a way that, the first user will become the admin for the system.

Here we can create new forums and that forum will be displayed in the application. The first forum will be used as default forum.

Path for Future Work

Add search functionality
Add unit tests for both backend and frontend
Ability to change the name and logo of the site from admin panel.
Make the installation process more interactive
Add multiple theme support.
Add geolocation support

License

MIT License. Do whatever you want to do. :-)

A minimal forum application built with the following technologies:

Conclusion

Any pull request, issues and contribution is very appreciated.

OpenCrisisBoard:

Pim de Witte

Alex Taylor

ReForum (what the project is based on):

Provash Shoumma

jpowersdev / opencrisisboard Goto Github PK