Educa - Integrated Learning & Social Platform

Educa is a comprehensive Django-based project integrating an eLearning platform with a blog system, an online shop and a social platform.

✨ Core Features

🎓 eLearning Platform

• Course creation and management
• Multiple content types support (text, video, files)
• Student enrollment and progress tracking
• Interactive course discussion forums
• Real-time chat functionality for students and instructors

📝 Blog System

• Multi-author blog support
• Advanced tagging system
• RSS feeds
• Similar posts suggestions
• Markdown support for posts
• Comment system with threading
• Post sharing via email

📌 Social Bookmarking

• Image bookmarking from any website
• Custom bookmarklet for easy saving
• AJAX-powered infinite scroll
• Social following system
• Activity stream for users
• Image likes and favorites

🛍️ Online Shop

• Product catalog with categories
• Shopping cart using Django sessions
• Order management system
• Payment integration (Stripe/PayPal)
• PDF invoice generation
• Product recommendations
• Digital product delivery

🚀 Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• PostgreSQL (database)
• Redis (caching)
• RabbitMQ (async)
• WeasyPrint (pdf)

Setup Steps

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/jjokah/educa.git
cd educa

2. Create and activate virtual environment:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: `source .venv\Scripts\activate`

3. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Configure environment variables:

touch .env  # On Windows: `New-Item .env`

Edit .env file with your production/development settings

Key settings in .env:

DEBUG=True
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key
ALLOWED_HOSTS=127.0.0.1,localhost,0.0.0.0,your-ngrok-domin-name.ngrok.app,your-domin-name.com
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS=https://your-ngrok-domain-name.ngrok-free.app,https://your-domin-name.com

DATABASE_ENGINE=django.db.backends.postgresql
DATABASE_NAME=your-db-name
DATABASE_USER=your-db-user
DATABASE_PASSWORD=your-db-password
DATABASE_HOST=localhost
DATABASE_POST=5432

REDIS_HOST=localhost
REDIS_POST=6379
REDIS_DB=0

[email protected]
[email protected]
MAILGUN_API_KEY=your-mailgun-api-key
MAILGUN_SENDER_DOMAIN=mg.your-domain-name.com

PAYSTACK_SECRET_KEY=your-paystack-secret-key
PAYSTACK_PAYMENT_URL=your-paystack-url

5. Initialize the database:

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py loaddata initial_data.json

6. Start services:

redis-server
celery -A educa worker -l info
python manage.py runserver

🏗️ System Architecture

Applications Structure

educa/
├── account/        # User management
├── actions/        # Tracking user activities
├── blog/           # Blog system
├── cart/           # Shopping cart functionalities
├── coupons/        # Handles discount coupons
├── courses/        # App for managing courses
├── demo/           # Includes demonstration content
├── educa/          # Project core configurations
├── images/         # Social bookmarking
├── orders/         # Manages customer orders
├── payment/        # Handles payment processing
├── shop/           # Online shop
├── static/         # Static assets (CSS, JS, images)
├── templates/      # HTML templates for the frontend
.

Functional Overview

Blog:

• post list, post details
• pagination, post comments, email sharing
• tagging, markdown, sitemap, RSS feed, search engine

__

Social:

• user account
• social authentication
• bookmarking, liking, infinite scroll
• track user actions

__

Shop:

• product listing, shopping cart, order creation
• ordering management, payment integration
• coupon system, recommendation engine
• internationalization

__

E-Learning:

• content management system
• rendering and caching content
• API views and end points
• chat server

Key Technologies

• Frontend:

  • HTML/CSS
  • JavaScript/jQuery
  • AJAX for dynamic loading
  • Custom bookmarklet

• Backend:

  • Django
  • Django Channels
  • Django REST framework
  • Celery
  • Redis
  • PostgreSQL

• Additional Tools:

  • Pillow for image processing
  • WeasyPrint for PDF generation
  • WebSockets for real-time features
  • django-taggit for tagging
  • Easy-thumbnails for image thumbnails
  • Google OAuth2 for social authentication
  • Paystack for payment
  • Mailgun for mailing

🚀 Deployment

Deployment instructions for production:

1. Set up server with required dependencies
2. Configure nginx/gunicorn
3. Set up SSL certificates
4. Configure PostgreSQL
5. Set up Redis and Celery
6. Set up Mailgun
7. Set up GoogleAuth
8. Set up Paystack
9. Configure static/media files serving
10. Set environment variables

Acknowledgement

Thanks to the Antonio Melé for his book - Django By Example, which this project is based on.