BJJ Tracker

Now that we've had users sign-up and give feedback, I felt the concept had been validated. The next step was to check the boxes, chime the bells, and wet the whistles for a Progressive Web App. Once the software had offline support I used the The Digital Asset Links protocol and API to generate an .apk via Android Studio. Shortly after, I added BJJ Tracker to the Google Play store. Since then, this has been a major source of organic traffic.

An MVP was finished, and I started distributing the web URL to training partners and mentors. After receiving feedback, I was able to quickly iterate to fix bugs, roadblocks, and other friction. Next, I began adding new features and polishing the design and UI.

Having written out my desired features, it was time to plan the tech. I wrote out the schema for my database tables, and sketched how users would flow through the experience.

BJJ Tracker is a web app, hosted on a AWS Linux server, running Apache, PHP, and MySql. I used Initializr to generate a bootstrap template to get my front-end started. One goal of this project was to build a web app framework that I could use to quickly get future projects running. This code would include user registration and login services, as well as other back-end concerns, on top of a front-end. I’ve cleaned most of this code into a generic repo on GitHub.

After tracking my own training progress on calendars and notebooks, I tried to find an app that would fulfill my need. Not being able to discover a good fit, I began planning. Having a calendar was an essential feature so that I could visualize my progress.