ConnectNow: A Full-Stack Social Media App from Scratch

Short summary

Tutorial on building ConnectNow, a full-stack social media platform from scratch using React+Vercel, Node.js/Express on Render, and MongoDB. Covers normalized database schema design, and critical lessons: use cloud storage (Cloudinary) instead of ephemeral filesystems, commit package-lock.json for reproducible builds, and whitelist CORS domains for security. Includes JWT/OAuth authentication and polling-based real-time messaging.

• •Complete architecture: React frontend on Vercel, Express backend on Render, MongoDB with normalized schemas for users, posts, comments, messages
• •Key deployment lessons learned: cloud storage for images (Cloudinary), package-lock.json for reproducible builds, secure CORS configuration
• •Implementation walkthrough: JWT and Google OAuth authentication, BCrypt password hashing, real-time messaging with polling strategy

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