This is an open source, live documention on the development of the Prototypr Grant for The Web Project: "Democratising Design Education with a Web Monetized Publishing Platform".
✨ This flagship project will develop Prototypr as an inclusive Web Monetized publishing platform for designers, that rewards contributors whilst democratising design education by providing openly accessible, quality content across different cultures.
Traditionally, blogs and educational content in the design industry have been openly accessible for anyone on the web to learn from, no matter their background. With the cost of design education inaccessible to many, the open web enabled a thriving self-taught generation of designers and developers. Throughout 2016 to today though, there's been a rise in centralized publishing platforms optimizing for paywalled business models that create a barrier to free learning. Prototypr is an independent online UX/UI design publication with 2k+ authors and 6k+ articles published over the last 5 years. Topics we cover include design, prototyping, coding, and future technologies such as AR/VR, AI and 3D. In a community that has knowledge sharing at its core, Web Monetization gives us the ability to reward creators, whilst keeping the web open. Prototypr contributors are industry professionals who value the reach and distribution of their articles just as much (or even more) than earning money from what they write. This project will develop Prototypr as an inclusive Web Monetized publishing platform for designers, that rewards contributors whilst democratising design education by providing openly accessible, quality content across different cultures.
This documentation will cover:
- Front-end built with Next.js
- Back-end CMS with Strapi.io
- Authentication with social logins such as Twitter and GitHub
- Deployment on Vercel and Digital Ocean App Platform
- How accessibility, internationalisation and localisation are considered
- Design decisions along the way
This is a living document that will be updated as new features are added. The project will also be released under MIT license for you to copy, reuse and build upon.