📘 SitCoders – College Community Forum

A production-ready student community forum built with the MERN stack, designed for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and engagement within college communities. ======= The official student forum platform for our college community.

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📁 Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Features
3. Tech Stack
4. API Overview
5. Project Structure
6. Getting Started
7. Roadmap
8. Team

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💂 Overview

SitCoders is a web-based forum designed for students to post, discuss, and collaborate. It includes authentication, role-based access, post & comment systems, and a powerful admin dashboard — all in a modern, responsive interface.

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🚀 Features

🔐 Authentication & Security

• Email + OTP verification
• JWT-based authentication (HTTP-only cookies)
• Role-based access: Student, Admin, Super Admin
• Admin approval for new users

📝 Content & Interaction

• Rich-text posts with Markdown & image uploads (Cloudinary)
• Tag-based filtering & shareable post URLs
• Nested comments & replies
• User profiles with avatars, bio, and post history

🛠 Admin Tools

• Approve/reject user registrations
• Manage posts & accounts
• Assign admin roles
• View user analytics

🎨 UI/UX

• Responsive design with Tailwind CSS
• Real-time updates
• URL-based navigation & pagination

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🌐 Tech Stack

Frontend:

• React 19, React Router 7
• Tailwind CSS, Axios, DOMPurify, Marked

Backend:

• Node.js, Express 5
• MongoDB & Mongoose
• JWT, Bcrypt
• Multer & Cloudinary
• Nodemailer, Node-cron

Development Tools:

• Git & GitHub, ESLint, Nodemon, Vite

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🔌 API Overview

Users

POST   /api/users/register           # Register with email & OTP
POST   /api/users/verify-otp         # Verify OTP
POST   /api/users/login              # Login
PUT    /api/users/profile            # Update profile
POST   /api/users/upload-avatar      # Upload avatar

Posts

GET    /api/posts/get-posts          # Get posts (pagination, filter)
POST   /api/posts/create-post        # Create post
PUT    /api/posts/:postId            # Edit post
DELETE /api/posts/:postId            # Delete post

Comments

POST   /api/comments/create/:postId  # Add comment
POST   /api/comments/reply/:id       # Reply to comment

Admin

GET    /api/admin/unverified-users   # List unverified users
PUT    /api/admin/verify-user/:id    # Verify user

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📁 Project Structure

SITCoders/
├── backend/       # API controllers, models, routes, middleware
├── frontend/      # React application
└── uploads/       # Temporary file storage

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⚡ Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js ≥16
• MongoDB
• Cloudinary account
• SMTP email service (e.g., Gmail)

Installation

# Clone repo
git clone <repository-url>
cd SITCoders

# Backend setup
cd backend
npm install
npm run dev

# Frontend setup
cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

Backend .env Example

MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_connection
ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=your_secret
CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=your_cloudinary_name
EMAIL_USER=your_email
EMAIL_PASS=your_app_password

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📌 Roadmap

• Real-time notifications (WebSocket)
• Advanced search
• Mobile app version
• Cloud deployment (AWS/Vercel)
• Unit testing

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👨‍💻 Team

Built with ❤️ by:

• Navneet Raj – Lead Developer
• Avesh Raj Singh – Lead Developer

"Code together. Learn together." – SitCoders Team

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