CS472 Group Project: BadgerCS Career Nexus

BadgerCS Career Nexus is a specialized web platform designed to support the career development of Computer Science students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Built as a course project for CS/LIS472: Introduction to Web Development (Spring 2025), the platform integrates front-end technologies to deliver a modern, responsive, and student-focused experience.

Project Purpose

The main objective of this website is to provide a centralized hub for UW–Madison CS students to:

• Discover internships and job opportunities relevant to their field.
• Prepare for technical and behavioral interviews.
• Connect and share advice through an interactive community forum.
• Organize their job applications and track career progress.

The platform is designed for CS students, recent graduates, and university career advisors seeking accessible tools and peer-to-peer knowledge exchange.

Technologies Used

• HTML5 – Semantic structure and accessibility
• CSS3 + Bootstrap 5 – Responsive and consistent styling across devices
• JavaScript (ES6) – Dynamic interactions and DOM manipulation
• RESTful Architecture – Frontend-backend communication using JSON
• Docker – Containerized deployment for environment parity

Key Features

• Job Listings Page: Filterable listings by job type, location, and experience. Each listing links to a detailed job view.
• Job Detail Page: Includes company info, salary, job type, required skills, and application tracking features.
• Community Forum: Users can post updates, share resources, like and comment, and view trending career topics.
• User Dashboard(TO-DO): Personalized overview with saved jobs, applications, and uploaded resumes.
• Authentication Pages(TO-DO): Registration and login forms with plans to support university SSO (OAuth2 + JWT).
• Interview Preparation(TO-DO): Tips, practice questions, and resources curated for CS students.

Development Practices

• Git Branching Strategy: Feature-based branching with pull requests and code reviews.
• Modular Codebase: HTML, CSS, and JS are separated and reusable across pages.
• Responsive Design: Grid system and media queries ensure usability on mobile and desktop.
• Accessibility: Proper alt tags, keyboard focus states, and ARIA attributes used where applicable.

Future Improvements

• Add persistent backend database (e.g., Firebase, Supabase)
• Implement SSO with university credentials using OAuth2
• Real-time updates for forum posts and application tracking
• Integrate UW Career Center APIs
• Enhanced analytics and resume parsing in user dashboards

Presentation Summary

In our final presentation, we demonstrated key workflows including job browsing, forum interactions, and the user dashboard. We discussed challenges such as ensuring cross-browser compatibility and managing user authentication, and reflected on lessons learned in modular design, responsive UI, and real-world deployment planning.

👥 Team Members

• Jierui (Jerry) Xu
• Yixi Zhou
• Chenxi (Sherry) Xia

Course: CS/LIS472 — Introduction to Web Development
Semester: Spring 2025
Instructor: Cole Nelson

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🔗 Live Demo: https://cs272-s25.github.io/p3

Git Collaboration Guide

• There are multiple branches in this repository.

  • main branch: This is the main branch where the stable version of the code resides.
  • dev branch: This is the development branch where new features and changes are made and merged before publishing it to main branch.
  • frontend/feature-xxx branches: These branches are used for developing specific features in the frontend.
  • backend/feature-xxx branches: These branches are used for developing specific features in the backend.

• Steps to follow:

  1. At the beginning, git clone the repository to your local machine.
  2. Check the branches you'll work on:

     git branch -r
     git checkout xxx

  3. Always git pull origin xxx before starting to work on the xxx branch.
  4. Use git push origin xxx to push your changes to the xxx branch.

• Reference Links

  • Update Git branches from master: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3876977/update-git-branches-from-master