mindwendel

Create a challenge. Ready? Brainstorm. mindwendel helps you to easily brainstorm and upvote ideas and thoughts within your team. Built from scratch with Phoenix.

Features

• 5 minute setup (It is not a joke)
• Anonymously invite people to your brainstormings - no registration needed. Usernames are optional.
• Easily create and upvote ideas, with live updates from your companions.
• Cluster your ideas with custom labels
• Preview of links to ease URL sharing
• Export your generated ideas to html or csv (currently comma separated)
• German & English Translation files
• By default, brainstormings are deleted after 30 days to ensure GDPR compliancy.

Use-cases

Brainstorm ...

• ... new business ideas
• ... solutions for a problem
• ... what to eat tonight
• ...

Getting Started

mindwendel can be run just about anywhere. So checkout our Installation Guides for detailed instructions for various deployments.

Here's the TLDR:

• Run mindwendel via Docker and reference your postgres database

  docker run -d --name mindwendel \
    -p 127.0.0.1:80:4000 \
    -e DATABASE_HOST="..." \
    -e DATABASE_PORT="5432" \
    -e DATABASE_SSL="false" \
    -e DATABASE_NAME="mindwendel_prod" \
    -e DATABASE_USER="mindwendel_db_user" \
    -e DATABASE_USER_PASSWORD="mindwendel_db_user_password" \
    -e SECRET_KEY_BASE="generate_your_own_secret_key_base_and_save_it" \
    -e URL_HOST="your_domain_to_mindwendel" \
    ghcr.io/mindwendel/mindwendel

NOTE: mindwendel requires a postgres database. You can use our docker-compose file to also install the postgres.

Contributing

To get started with a development installation of mindwendel, follow the instructions below.

mindwendel is built on top of:

• Elixir
• Phoenix Framework
• Phoenix LiveView
• PostgreSQL

Development

• Startup docker-compose setup

  docker-compose up --build -d

• Setup the database

  docker-compose exec app mix ecto.setup

• Start the server

  docker-compose exec app mix phx.server

• Go to http://localhost:4000/

• Open you favorite editor and start developing

• Open a shell in the docker container to execute tests, etc.

  docker-compose exec app sh

• Go to http://localhost:4000/

Testing

• Startup docker-compose setup

  docker-compose up --build -d

• Ensure your database is running and reset your database

  docker-compose exec app mix ecto.test.prepare

• Run the test

  docker-compose exec app mix test

Production

• Generate self-signed ssl sertificate for the postgres server on the host machine; the generated files are mounted into the docker container

  mkdir -p ./ca
  openssl req -new -text -passout pass:abcd -subj /CN=localhost -out ./ca/server.req -keyout ./ca/privkey.pem
  openssl rsa -in ./ca/privkey.pem -passin pass:abcd -out ./ca/server.key
  openssl req -x509 -in ./ca/server.req -text -key ./ca/server.key -out ./ca/server.crt
  chmod 600 ./ca/server.key
  test $(uname -s) = Linux && chown 70 ./ca/server.key

• Duplicate and rename .env.default

  cp .env.prod.default .env.prod

• Adjust all configs in .env.prod, e.g. database settings, ports, disable ssl env vars if necessary

• Start everything at once (including a forced build):

  docker-compose --file docker-compose-prod.yml --env-file .env.prod up -d --build --force-recreate

• Open the browser and go to http://${URL_HOST}

Note

• The url has to match the env var URL_HOST; so http://localhost will not work when your URL_HOST=0.0.0.0
• The mindwendel production configuration is setup to enforce ssl, see Mindwendel.Endpoint configuration in config/prod.exs
• The mindwendel production configuration supports deployment behind a reverse porxy (load balancer) by parsing the proper protocol from the x-forwarded-* header of incoming requests, see config/prod.exs

Build release and production docker image

• Build the docker image based on our Dockerfile

  docker build -t mindwendel_prod .

Formatting

We are using Elixir's built-in formatter.

• Check if the code is properly formatted

  mix format --check-formatted

• Automatically format the code

  mix format

Environment Variables

Localization

Currently, there are two language files available, german ("de") and english ("en"). To set the default_locale, you can set MW_DEFAULT_LOCALE. The default is english.

You can extract new strings to translate by running:

mix gettext.extract --merge

Contributing

1. Fork it (https://github.com/mindwendel/mindwendel/fork)
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b fooBar)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some fooBar')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin fooBar)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Testimonials

kits is a project platform hosted by a public institution for quality development in schools (Lower Saxony, Germany) and focusses on digital tools and media in language teaching. mindwendel is used in workshops to activate prior knowledge, and collect and structure ideas. In addition, mindwendel can be found on https://kits.blog/tools and can be used by schools for free. More info on how to use it can be found in this post https://kits.blog/digitale-lesestrategien-brainstorming/

Logos and text provided with courtesy of kits.

Acknowledgements

• https://github.com/JannikStreek
• https://github.com/gerardo-navarro
• https://github.com/nwittstruck
• Lightbulb stock image by LED Supermarket at Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/die-gluhbirne-577514/