Leuven Language Buddies

Leuven Language Buddies is a community by and for people who want to practice a/their language(s). They often come together every week in thematic tables.

As the admin was wondering about expansion plans, we worked on adding a website to our communication methods. Reasons for this were multiple, including independence from Facebook and its evolving business practices. It also would function as a backend for other tools, like a Discord bot, mailing service and calendar links for people to subscribe to in their own application of choice.

The website is written in the Django framework (for fast development). The styling is done using a customized Bootstrap. The website doesn’t contain a lot of JS. This is done as well for quicker development.

Intially, the website was deployed on Fly.io, an American hosting company. For obvious geopolitical and legal reasons, we decided to move to Hetzner. This gave us the additional benefits of having a green energy hosting. To make hosting a bit easier, it is hosted on Coolify.

The website is made and designed around a combination of our old logo, designed by Hansel Bontemps, and a self-designed new logo. The new logo is easier to use in print applications and also a lot simpler to manipulate (e.g. each language has its ISO code in the shape, a pride version exists or a Belgian one for the National Holiday).