Note: the site, launched in 2013, was closed in 2019 when the activity ceased.
The project
FotoApp is a community where photography enthusiasts who have chosen the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines as their subject can share, and possibly sell, their best shots.
The project was born from a love for the beauty of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and a passion for photography, which can capture and freeze in time the landscapes, the seasons and the communities that make it a unique place.
Anything with the "flavor" of the Apennines (mountains, woods, meadows, animals, villages, people…) is a perfect subject for the community. One of the main goals is to let aspiring photographers show their work, exchange views with other photographers, amateur or otherwise, and improve their technique.
The creators
My role consisted of working closely with Fabio Gualtieri (friend and colleague) on the full-stack development of the portal. Here are the main people who, besides me, play an active role in the project:
Cesare Romei
A lively lover of the Apennines, in his work as an antenna installer he often got to admire the splendid mountain views from the rooftops. That's how he came up with the idea of founding FotoApp.it, becoming its first promoter and manager.
Fabio Gualtieri
A web designer and programmer, he has known Cesare for a long time. His passion for photography led him to contribute to the project by conceiving and building the site.
Maicol Mercati
Passionate about photography, hiking, via ferratas and climbing, and a friend of Cesare and Fabio. He actively contributes to the project and to running the site.
Developing the portal
Fabio and I built the back-end and front-end on the CakePHP framework, which follows an MVC code organization and provides a level of abstraction suited to building even complex web apps.
The user interface, clean and functional, is based on Bootstrap, with substantial custom CSS and JavaScript additions, especially for the grid of expandable panels on the homepage.
The connected blog, on the other hand, was built on WordPress, as the tool best suited to the purpose.
