
I built a little social network for South African Expats and Travellers - ronaldl93
https://southafricans.online/
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ronaldl93
Hello Everyone. :)

Story

I started a little side project with the goal to help South African expats and
travellers learn more about where they are going to and make it easier to
settle in by connecting with fellow South Africans who's already there or
who's also getting ready to depart.

Features

Each registered user gets a personal profile page with a bio and passport
stamps of where you have travelled to. Just go to a country page where you've
been and click on the stamp passport button.

Countries with some data are constantly being added. At the moment there's
over 30 countries. Each country page shows users who's been there and who's
currently there. I'm still trying to find a free API so the exchange rates can
be updated 24/7.

Stores & Restaurants. Almost every country with a reasonable South African
expat community will have a South African restaurant or shop to buy the things
you miss most. This data is completely crowdsourced and users can populate the
database.

Chat Room. Every user registered automatically gets an email invitation to
join the South Africans Online slack group. At first I thought of adding
something like a forum, but I figured something more instant is what people
want today. Imagine you arrive in London alone, don't know anyone. Simply open
up the Slack and ask "Who's up for a beer?". It's 2018. Nothing weird about
it. Please help us populate the chat. Every country / region have its own
slack channel.

More features like events/meetups/jobs and visa requirements are coming soon.

Feedback is always needed. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you found a bug,
have an idea or just wanna say something, use slack or the feedback button on
the bottom left to give me a shout. I only started

FAQ: A few have asked why I only have Facebook / Google login. It makes
signing up easier and gets your profile picture automatically, saving you time
and keeping the server's performance optimal. Does it make it your account
vulnerable? No, all the data gets hashed I don't see anything. I don't store
passwords or sensitive data like that. Facebook / Google sends me an
authentication token that looks something like 95395ytv0n183t901y031093v1853r2
and cannot be deciphered by anyone but them. Also I cannot and will not post
anything to your facebook and google accounts.

And for anyone wondering - I keep the data as open as possible:
[https://southafricans.online/open](https://southafricans.online/open)

Thanks so much for reading.

Have a good week! :)

