StudentStash is Bilkent University's social marketplace, designed to facilitate various transactions among Bilkent students and staff.
The motivation behind the creation of StudentStash at Bilkent University borns from the absence of a unified and reliable social platform catering specifically to the needs of students and staff such as finding flatmates/roommates, borrowing or purchasing second-hand items.
Currently available platforms do not adequately empower students to efficiently search for their needs or discover previous announcements that may align with their requirements. It also promotes user socialization by offering, chats, sections to find companions for certain activities, etc. StudentStash aims to address this issue by serving as a platform for Bilkenters to buy, sell, lend, donate items, search for lost belongings, or find housing/roommates. The ultimate goal in developing this platform is to make campus life more convenient and sustainable for all Bilkenters.
Create/Edit/Delete Listings: Users can create listings for Secondhand Sales, finding Rommates/Housemates, finding Activity Buddy, Borrowing, Donations and Lost&Found. These listings can include detailed descriptions and photos. All created listings are conveniently accessible within the user's profile page, where they can be edited or deleted at the user's discretion.
Save/Unsave Listings: Users can save any listing and it can later be accessed at their profile under a “Saved Listings” section. This feature enables users to easily track and revisit listings of interest.
Filter/Search Listing: Users can filter the listings based on their types directly from the dashboard. Additionally, users can employ a search function to quickly locate listings by their titles, ensuring a more efficient exploration.
Start/Delete Chats: Users are able to initiate chats with other users through the platform, using the listings as a starting point. All these conversations are conveniently stored in the user's inbox for easy access. Furthermore, users have the option to delete chats, providing them with control over their communication history.
Block/Unblock User: Users have the ability to block and unblock individuals as needed, ensuring a secure communication environment.
- To ensure proper functionality of this project, it is necessary to have NodeJS v20.10.0 installed on your machine.
- Additionally, if you intend to use a local database, MongoDB must be installed. If not, the database URI must be set accordingly in the .env file.
- You need to clone this repository (https://github.com/gazellem/StudentStash) to your local machine using “git clone”.
- Make sure you are on the finalSubmission branch
- Launch your preferred Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and open the project folder.
- Open the terminal and navigate separately into the "client" and "server" folders using the commands "cd client" and "cd server," respectively.
- If this is your initial build of the project, execute the "npm install" command within both folders to install the necessary dependencies.
- Lastly, initiate the web application by running the "npm run start" command.
By following these steps, you'll have successfully set up and launched the project on your local machine.