🚀 Nova Coders Website

Welcome to the Nova Coders official website repository! This is a modern, full-stack web application built to serve the Nova Coders community, offering a rich, interactive user experience with an robust backend infrastructure.

📋 Table of Contents

• Project Overview
• Key Features
• Technology Stack
• Project Structure
• Installation & Setup
• Environment Variables
• Running the Application
• API Documentation
• Contributing
• License

🎯 Project Overview

Nova Coders is a dynamic, SEO-optimized educational and community platform. It features user authentication, a comprehensive admin dashboard, a certificate generation and verification system, and a suite of interactive UI elements. The platform is designed to manage members, showcase portfolios, and streamline contact inquiries while ensuring a premium, animated user experience.

✨ Key Features

• Robust Authentication: Secure JWT-based signup, signin, and role-based access control (Admin/User).
• Interactive UI/UX: Powered by Framer Motion, React Spring, and Three.js for 3D elements and micro-animations, along with Lenis for smooth scrolling.
• Admin Dashboard: A centralized hub for managing users, content, member profiles, and tracking platform analytics.
• Certificate System: Automated generation and robust verification system for course and event certificates.
• SEO Optimized: Comprehensive SEO strategy utilizing react-helmet-async for meta-tag management across pages, with configured robots.txt and sitemap.xml.
• Member & Contact Management: Streamlined handling of member data and contact form inquiries.

🛠️ Technology Stack

Frontend (Client)

• Framework: React 18 with Vite
• State Management: Redux Toolkit & React Context API
• Styling: Tailwind CSS & PostCSS
• Animations & 3D: Framer Motion, React Spring, Three.js, @react-spring/web
• Routing: React Router v6 & react-router-hash-link
• Utilities: Axios, Lenis (smooth scrolling), Swiper, React Hook Form, Lucide React / React Icons
• SEO: React Helmet Async

Backend (Server)

• Runtime: Node.js
• Framework: Express.js
• Database: MongoDB with Mongoose ODM
• Security: Helmet, bcryptjs (password hashing), jsonwebtoken (JWT), cookie-parser
• Validation: express-validator

📁 Project Structure

nova-coders-website/
├── backend/                 # Express server & API
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── app.js           # Express app configuration
│   │   ├── controllers/     # Route controllers (authController, etc.)
│   │   ├── db/              # MongoDB connection setup
│   │   ├── middlewares/     # Auth, Admin, and Error middlewares
│   │   ├── models/          # Mongoose schemas (User, Member, Certificate)
│   │   └── routes/          # API endpoints definition
│   ├── server.js            # Server entry point
│   └── package.json
│
└── frontend/                # React + Vite application
    ├── src/
    │   ├── api/             # Axios configurations and API calls
    │   ├── assets/          # Images, fonts, and static assets
    │   ├── components/      # Reusable UI components (SignIn, etc.)
    │   ├── config/          # App configurations
    │   ├── context/         # React Context providers (DataProvider)
    │   ├── hooks/           # Custom React hooks
    │   ├── pages/           # Main page components (Home, About, Portfolio)
    │   ├── routes/          # Application routing logic (MainRoutes)
    │   ├── store/           # Redux store and slices
    │   ├── index.css        # Global Tailwind styles
    │   └── main.jsx         # React application entry point
    ├── public/              # Public assets (robots.txt, sitemap.xml)
    ├── vite.config.js       # Vite bundler configuration
    └── package.json

💾 Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or higher recommended)
• npm or yarn
• MongoDB (Local instance or MongoDB Atlas URL)

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/novacoders-edu/nova.git
cd nova

2. Frontend Setup

cd frontend
npm install

3. Backend Setup

cd ../backend
npm install

⚙️ Environment Variables

Backend Configuration (backend/.env)

Create a .env file in the backend/ directory:

PORT=5000
MONGODB_URI=mongodb://localhost:27017/novacoders
NODE_ENV=development
JWT_SECRET=your_super_secret_jwt_key

Frontend Configuration (frontend/.env)

Create a .env file in the frontend/ directory:

VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:5000/api

🚀 Running the Application

Development Mode

You will need two terminal windows to run the frontend and backend concurrently.

Terminal 1 - Backend:

cd backend
npm run dev

Server runs on http://localhost:5000

Terminal 2 - Frontend:

cd frontend
npm run dev

Frontend runs on http://localhost:5173

Production Build

To build the frontend for production:

cd frontend
npm run build

This will generate a dist/ folder containing the optimized static assets.

🔗 API Documentation (Core Routes)

Authentication

• POST /api/auth/signup - Register a new user
• POST /api/auth/signin - Authenticate a user and receive a token
• POST /api/auth/logout - Invalidate user session

Members

• GET /api/members - Retrieve member directory
• POST /api/members - Add a new member (Admin only)
• GET /api/members/:id - Get specific member details

Certificates

• GET /api/certificates - List all certificates
• POST /api/certificates - Generate a new certificate (Admin only)
• GET /api/certificates/verify/:id - Public route to verify certificate authenticity

Contacts

• POST /api/contacts - Submit a new contact inquiry
• GET /api/contacts - Retrieve all inquiries (Admin only)

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions to Nova Coders! Please follow these steps:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature).
5. Open a Pull Request for review.

📄 License

This project is proprietary and confidential. All rights reserved by Nova Coders.