runnDAILY.com

Co-founded and developed a fitness mapping website that helped runners plan and track their routes. Created with Chandler Wall while at Purdue, the platform was born from our shared passion for running and a desire to improve upon existing fitness tracking solutions. This was in 2009, during the early days of smartphones, when MapMyRun was the primary competitor in this space.

The site operated for 3 years with two major updates, continuing development even after graduation and the start of our full-time careers.

Source: runnDAILY on GitHub

Interface

The main interface provided an intuitive dashboard for users to manage their routes and activities.

The route creation interface combined Google Maps with custom controls for precise route planning.

Key Features

• Interactive route mapping and planning
• Distance and elevation calculations
• User profiles and activity tracking
• Social sharing and community features
• Mobile-friendly design
• Advanced route creation with distance markers
• Nearby route discovery
• Comprehensive permission system for route sharing

Technical Stack

Frontend

• HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery
• Heavy AJAX usage for dynamic content loading
• Google Maps API integration with custom routing features

Backend

• PHP with a custom MVC-style framework
• Custom templating system inspired by Smarty
  • Compiled templates into single executable PHP files
  • Optimized for reduced server-side loading
• MySQL database with complex many-to-many relationships
• Apache server
• Subversion for version control and deployment

Achievements

• Featured in Purdue Exponent newspaper

Outcome

Chandler and I worked on the site for a bit after graduation, but we eventually shuttered it since we had full time jobs.