---
title: Building an Open-Source Hub - A platform for sharing and collaboration
banner: /images/blogs/collaboration.png
thumbnail: /images/blogs/collaboration.png
featured: true
starred: false
author: Aishik Mukherjee
authorAvatar: /images/blogs/pic-AM.jpg
date: 03/06/2023 #mm/dd/yyyy
---

### Introduction

Open source has been a driving force in the software development community for many years, encouraging collaboration, transparency, and innovation. Our new website is just one of the many ways we're working to promote FOSS, by providing a platform for contributors to share their knowledge, collaborate on projects, and showcase their work to a global audience. Through this initiative, we hope to inspire others to join us in the journey towards a more open and collaborative future for software development. Our new website will host a variety of OpenSource Projects, Blogs, Talks, and other useful information, all of which will be available to anyone who wants to learn, contribute, or get involved.

In this blog post, we'll explore the key features of our new website, the benefits it offers to companies, developers and the wider community, and the role it plays in our broader open-source initiatives. So, without further ado, let's dive in and explore the world of open source together!

### Need for an Opensource Portal/Website

A website dedicated to hosting MapleLabs's open-source work and promoting our open-source initiative is essential for several reasons. Firstly, it provides a centralized platform where contributors can showcase their projects, share knowledge, and collaborate with other companies and developers in the community. This not only makes it easier for companies to find relevant information and resources, but also helps to foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing across the wider developer community.

Additionally, a dedicated open-source website will help to showcase our open-source principles and demonstrate our commitment to giving back to the community. By providing a platform for contributors to contribute their skills and expertise to open-source projects, we hope to inspire others to do the same and help drive the growth and development of open-source software for years to come.

### Configurable website design and architecture

When designing our open-source website, we wanted to ensure that it was not only functional and easy to use, but also highly configurable to meet the needs of our diverse community of developers. To accomplish this, we opted for a template-based design and architecture that allows users to host their content without sacrificing its core functionality. By using a configurable template design, we were able to create a website that is both visually appealing and highly functional. Additionally, the use of templates means that anyone can easily contribute by adding new templates to the website without having to completely overhaul the underlying architecture. Overall, we believe that our configurable template design and architecture is a key strength of our open-source website, and will help to ensure its success and growth for years to come.

We have included Storybook for our templates in the codebase, which allows contributors to test their templates before committing them to the repository. This ensures that the code is fully functional and helps them to get a preview of their template. By incorporating the Storybook into our development process, we can provide an efficient and streamlined experience for contributors, making it easier for them to create high-quality templates that can be used on the website.

Furthermore, our repository’s template-based design makes it easy for other organizations to create their own website using our open-source code. Companies, colleges, and training institutes can take advantage of our templates to increase their own open-source footprint and provide a platform for their own projects, blogs, and other resources.

### Why Next.js?

When it came to selecting a coding framework for our open-source website, we wanted to choose a solution that was not only powerful and feature-rich, but also easy to use and maintain. After careful consideration, we settled on Next.js as our framework of choice, and we couldn't be happier with the results.

When it comes to building high-performance web applications, Next.js has emerged as a popular and powerful choice among developers. This framework, based on the React JavaScript library, offers a wide range of features and benefits that make it an ideal choice for our open-source website. First and foremost, Next.js allows us to build dynamic, server-rendered web pages with ease, delivering lightning-fast performance and a seamless user experience. Additionally, Next.js offers a wide range of other benefits, including built-in support for incremental static site generation, easy integration with popular APIs and databases, and robust community support.

### How can you contribute?

We welcome contributions to this project! If you're interested in contributing, please take a moment to review our Contributing Guidelines before you get started.

Our contributing guidelines provide information on:

- How to fork and submit feature requests
- Our coding standards
- How to set up your development environment
- The process for submitting code changes
- How to contact us with questions or feedback

By following these guidelines, you can help us ensure that your contributions are valuable and effective.

### The team

Meet the talented team members who made our open-source website a reality and enabled us to share Projects, Blogs, Talks, Videos, and more with the community.

- **Skanda** – Senior Developer
- **Tejaswini** – Developer
- **Varshini** - Developer
- **Aishik** – Project Lead
- **Pravin** – UX Designer
- **Aswin** – Mentor and Architect
- **Ram** – Mentor

### Conclusion

In conclusion, our open-source initiative to develop a website to host MapleLabs’s OpenSource Projects, Blogs, Talks, and other useful information has been an exciting and rewarding journey. We believe that open source is not only a way to share knowledge and expertise but also a powerful force for innovation and collaboration. By providing an accessible platform for companies, developers and contributors, we hope to inspire and empower others to make their own contributions to the open-source community.

Thank you for taking the time to read about our open-source initiative, and we hope that it has inspired you to get involved and make your own contributions to the open-source community. We are proud to be a part of the open-source movement, and we are committed to continuing our work to promote and support open source development.
