Spools

Spools is a social media platform with functionalities similar to the Threads app, allowing users to create profiles, post images, like and reply to posts, and engage in real-time chatting. This project is built using the MERN stack, and it combines frontend, backend, and database operations for a seamless user experience.

🌟 Features

User Management

• User Authentication: Sign up, login, and logout functionality with secure password hashing.
• Profile Management: Users can update their profile, including changing their name, username, bio, and profile picture.
• View Profiles: Users can view other user profiles and follow them.

Posts & Interactions

• Create Posts: Users can upload images and create posts.
• Feed: Displays a feed of posts from followed users, similar to Pinterest and Instagram.
• Like & Reply to Posts: Users can like posts and add comments/replies to engage with the content.
• Save Posts: Users have the ability to save posts they like for later viewing.

Real-time Chatting

• Direct Messaging: Users can chat with each other in real time.
• Seen Status: Messages are marked as seen when the recipient views them.
• Message Notifications: Receive notifications for new messages and replies.

Responsive Design

• Light & Dark Mode: Custom-tailored light and dark mode styles for a better user experience.
• Responsive UI: Designed for all screen sizes, ensuring a consistent experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.

💻 Tech Stack

Frontend

• React: For building a dynamic and responsive user interface.
• Tailwind CSS: For styling the UI with custom colors, light/dark mode, and responsiveness.
• Chakra UI: For toast notifications and modals.
• Recoil: For state management.
• Cloudinary: For handling profile picture uploads.
• JavaScript (ES6+): For client-side logic and interactions.

Backend

• Node.js: For server-side logic.
• Express.js: For building the REST API.
• MongoDB: As a NoSQL database to store user data and posts.
• Mongoose: For data modeling and validation.
• JWT (JSON Web Tokens): For authentication and authorization.
• bcrypt.js: For hashing passwords.

Other Tools

• Git & GitHub: For version control.
• Postman: For testing API endpoints.
• Figma: For designing the UI layout and prototyping.

🚀 Getting Started

Follow these steps to get a local copy of the project up and running.

Prerequisites

• Node.js installed on your machine.
• MongoDB installed locally or a MongoDB Atlas account.
• Cloudinary Account for handling image uploads.