As I told you in my last Sunday Blog, I received a message from one of the mentors. Let me walk you through what happened next.
I woke up to the message: “You have been shortlisted for an internship with The Palisadoes Foundation.” I felt amazing! Then I saw that I had to submit a proposal on the topic: “API improvement and backend stability to handle heavy traffic, and fixing the CORS issue permanently on both the admin and API.” The deadline was Saturday, and it was only Monday. But I was so thrilled that I immediately got an adrenaline rush and completed my proposal by Thursday itself.
After a week or two, I received another message: “Congratulations, you have been selected as an intern with The Palisadoes Foundation.” I felt a huge sense of relief after all those days of stress — the constant “what if I don’t make it?” thoughts — but in the end, I finally did.
Now, let’s talk about the technical side of things.
Since I was already familiar with the Talawa codebase, having contributed for about 6–7 months, I knew exactly where to begin. I started by resolving the CORS issue in the local setup of Talawa, then collaborated with the organization admin to fix it on the deployed site as well.
Next, I implemented a Port-Check Script to identify available and unavailable ports, helping reduce debugging time and local setup issues.
After that, I focused on restoring the Posts page features for both the User and Admin portals. While doing so, I discovered a few bugs in the API and fixed them. Now, the User Portal supports all post-related features — rendering posts, adding, updating, pinning, and deleting them.
I also worked on improving the User Interface of the Posts page to enhance the user experience and make it more visually engaging, similar to the posts we usually see on Instagram. I experimented with different layouts — first making pinned posts look like Instagram Stories, and later adjusting their size for a better look.
In addition, I fixed several bugs in the GitHub workflows, improved test coverage, and updated the deployment pipeline to follow best practices. I even designed Figma mockups for the Posts pages to visualize the improved UI.
As my internship comes to an end, I’m happy to say that I’ve learned so much from this experience — from Frontend, Backend, Testing, and DevOps to UI/UX. This journey has truly helped me grow as a developer and as a problem solver.
A big thanks to The Palisadoes Foundation and everyone who guided me along the way. I’m grateful for the opportunity to apply my knowledge to a real-world project.