ryougi-shiky/forum

Introduction

This is a social website. Please use Chrome to get the full experience.

The weather API is expired. Please purchase it here: https://rapidapi.com/worldapi/api/open-weather13

Available Features:

1. Register new users
2. Log in
3. Add posts
4. Like posts
5. Add comments to a posts
6. Weather Forecast of user's location
7. Upload user icon
8. Change user info
9. Follow / Unfollow a user
10. Top bar can show the notifications of new following users
11. Search bar can find users by entering username or partial letters of the username

Features Showcases:

1. Register, Log in, Log out

2. Update user icon and info

3. Write post, Like post, Add comment

4. Click other user icon, Access their profile page, Follow them, Receive new follower notification

5. Search other username, Access their profile page, Unfollow them

User Manual

Localhost Deploy

Start Frontend Server

cd client

npm install

npm start

Modify .env to update backend url and open weather API key.

Start Backend Server

cd server

npm install

npm start

Modify config.env to update backend port and MongoDB database address.

MongoDB

How to save database

1. Navigate to a directory where you want to store the data.
2. Run mongodump. If dump exists already, it will be overwrited.
3. To backup a specific database on a specific host: mongodump --host=mongodb-host:port --db=your-db-name

How to restore database

1. cd to the folder includes dump
2. Run mongorestore(default on port 27017)
3. To restore specific database on a specific host: mongorestore --host mongodb0.example.com --port 27017 --db your_database_name /path/to/your/dump/your_database_name

Deploy on Azure Virtual Machine

Install SSL certificate

1. Buy a domain
2. Set Host records

Type          Host         Value         TTL   
A Record 	    @    Azure_VM_IP_addr   Automatic
CNAME Record www     Your_domain        Automatic

3. In Azure VM, set Server's 443 port open for inbound traffic
4. Follow https://certbot.eff.org/instructions?ws=nginx&os=ubuntufocal instruction to install SSL certificate on your machine.
5. Remember to record the cert and key files paths.

Configure NGINX

1. Decide which port to run the servers
2. Write configuration

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name aniani.cfd;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }
    
    location /users {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:5000/users;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }
}

// When listening port 443, add paths for the ssl cert and key that retrieved from last section.

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name aniani.cfd;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/aniani.cfd/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/aniani.cfd/privkey.pem;
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf;
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }

    location /users {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:5000/users;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }
}

1. Create and write your configuration file: sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp.
2. Create symbolic link: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
3. Test conf: sudo nginx -t
4. Restart Nginx: sudo systemctl reload nginx or sudo systemctl restart nginx
5. If have default conf, you can remove it: sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Use PM2 to host your website persistently

The VM may shut down the server processes. Use PM2 to restart the processed when they are down.

Since we are using npm start to run our server, we can run: pm2 start npm --name client -- run start To let pm2 run our start script.

To monitor all pm2 processes, run: pm2 list

To delete pm2 process, run: pm2 delete id

forum's Issues

Add templates for issue and PR

Actually only added PR template

Need post design doc