Study Compass

Study Compass - a PHP-based web application to discover and manage universities, scholarships, events, and community discussions.

Key Features

• Browse and search universities and scholarships
• Event listings and management
• User dashboard and application tracker
• Bookmarking and admin management panels
• Forum and posts (community discussion)
• Contract / messaging and contact forms
• Budget estimator and utilities

Tech stack

• PHP (plain PHP MVC-style organization)
• MySQL (SQL dumps are provided)
• Composer for dependency/autoload
• Front-end assets in assets/ (CSS, images)

Quick setup

1. Requirements: PHP 7.4+ (or later), MySQL, Composer, a webserver (Apache/IIS) or PHP built-in server.
2. Clone the repository.
3. Install dependencies (if needed):

composer install

4. Create a MySQL database and import SQL dumps from the assets/db/ folder (e.g., study_compass_final.sql).
5. Update database configuration in model/database.php to set your DB host, name, username, and password.
6. Ensure vendor/autoload.php is loadable (Composer creates this).
7. Configure your webserver document root to the project root or run PHP built-in server for quick local testing:

php -S localhost:8000

Open http://localhost:8000 (or your configured host) and use the provided pages.

Project structure (high level)

• controller/ : Request handlers and controllers (form checks, actions)
• model/ : Database and data-access models (e.g., uniModel.php, scholarshipModel.php)
• view/ : Page templates and UI (e.g., home.php, forum.php, userDashboard.php)
• assets/ : Styles and SQL dumps (assets/db/)
• vendor/ : Composer dependencies and autoload files

Important files

• model/database.php : DB connection settings — edit this for your environment
• assets/db/study_compass_final.sql : Main database schema / seed data
• controller/loginCheck.php and controller/registerCheck.php : Authentication handlers
• view/adminDashboard.php and view/userDashboard.php : Admin / user entry points

Usage notes

• This is a server-side rendered PHP app; pages under view/ expect PHP execution and DB connectivity.
• Back up your database before importing sample data into an existing database.

Contributing

• Fork the repo, create a branch, make changes, and open a pull request.
• Add brief notes in PR describing the change and any DB migrations.

Tests

No automated tests are included. Consider adding PHPUnit tests for models and controllers.

License

Add a license file (for example MIT) or update this README to state the chosen license.

Contact

For questions, open an issue or contact the maintainer via the repository issue tracker.

Study_Compass