Weekend Showcase Challenge: RakthaMitra
RakthaMitra is a community-focused web application built to organize voluntary blood donor information and make donor discovery simpler. The project is deployed on Amazon EC2 and was developed as part of my Summer Build journey, where I explored application development, cloud deployment, and AWS infrastructure.
Vision and What It Does
RakthaMitra is a community-focused web application built to organize and simplify the process of finding information about voluntary blood donors. The idea started with a simple observation: donor information can often be spread across different groups, contacts, and platforms, making it difficult to find relevant information quickly.
RakthaMitra brings this information into one platform. Users can register as donors by providing the required details, while other users can search available donor information based on blood group and other details provided through the application.
The main focus of the project is simplicity. Instead of creating a complicated platform, I wanted to build something where the core functionality is easy to understand and accessible to users.
RakthaMitra is a technology project intended to support communication between people interested in voluntary blood donation. It does not replace professional healthcare services or medical guidance.
How I Built It
I started the project by identifying the basic requirements and defining the main user flow. The first step was understanding what information would be useful for donor registration and how users could search the available records.
After defining the basic functionality, I worked on the application interface and backend. I focused on keeping the different steps straightforward and making the main features easy to access.
During development, I tested the core functionality and worked through issues that appeared while connecting the different parts of the application. Building the project also required thinking about how the application would work outside a local development environment.
One of the major steps was deploying RakthaMitra on AWS. I used Amazon EC2 to host the application and make it accessible through a cloud environment.
Moving from local development to a server environment was an important learning experience. I had to understand the deployment process, configure the server environment, troubleshoot issues, and make sure the application continued to work after deployment.
AWS Services and Architecture
RakthaMitra currently uses Amazon EC2 for application hosting.
The basic architecture is:
User → RakthaMitra Web Application → Amazon EC2 → Backend / Data Layer
Amazon EC2 provides the computing environment where the application runs. Using EC2 gave me practical experience with cloud infrastructure and helped me understand how a locally developed application can be deployed to an AWS environment.
AWS Service Used:
- Amazon EC2 — application hosting and compute
Live Application: Check out
Challenges
One of the main challenges was deployment. An application can behave differently when moved from a local computer to a remote server. Understanding the server environment and resolving configuration issues required testing and troubleshooting.
Another challenge was deciding which features should be part of the initial version. I learned that keeping the first version focused makes it easier to test, understand, and improve the project.
These challenges helped me understand that application development is an iterative process. Building, testing, finding problems, and improving the implementation are all important parts of creating a working project.
What I Learned Across the Summer
The Summer Build Series gave me an opportunity to learn through building projects rather than only studying concepts.
Through RakthaMitra, I gained practical experience in application development, testing, deployment, server configuration, and AWS infrastructure.
One of my biggest takeaways was that a project does not need to start with a large or complicated idea. Starting with a clear problem and building a focused solution can provide a strong foundation for future improvements.
Deploying RakthaMitra on Amazon EC2 was also an important milestone because it gave me hands-on experience with running an application on cloud infrastructure.
The Summer Build journey also encouraged me to experiment, solve problems independently, and keep improving an idea after the first version was complete.
What's Next
RakthaMitra is still a work in progress. In future versions, I would like to improve the user interface, search experience, information management, and explore additional AWS services.
For me, this project represents the journey from an initial idea to a working cloud-deployed application. The Summer Build Series provided the opportunity to build, experiment, deploy, and learn from the process.
I’m excited to continue improving RakthaMitra and share its progress with the AWS Builder community.
Builder who inspired me: @vibha21
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