Aluminate

Alumni–Student Engagement Platform

Live Demo: https://aluminate-syvf.onrender.com

About the Project

Aluminate is a MERN-based alumni networking platform designed to strengthen engagement between college students and alumni.

Key Features

• JWT-based authentication using HTTP-only cookies
• Alumni–student interaction and networking
• Well-structured MongoDB schemas
• Optimized database queries using indexes
• Full-stack MERN architecture (React + Express + MongoDB + Node.js)

Tech Stack

Layer	Stack
Frontend	React 19, Vite 7, Tailwind CSS v4, React Router v7, React Hook Form + Zod
Backend	Node.js 20, Express 5, Mongoose 8, JWT, bcrypt
Database	MongoDB Atlas
Container	Docker + Docker Compose, nginx (static serving)

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Project Setup Guide

1. Install Dependencies

npm run install:all

2. Configure Environment Variables

This step is required — the server will not start without it.

Create server/.env by copying the example file, then fill in your values:

cp server/.env.example server/.env

Open server/.env and replace the MONGODB_URI placeholders with your actual MongoDB username and password. Do not rename any of the variables.

Variable	Description
NODE_ENV	development or production
CORS_ORIGIN	Frontend origin (http://localhost:5173 locally)
PORT	Backend port (default 5000)
MONGODB_URI	MongoDB Atlas connection string
JWT_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET	Secret for signing access tokens
JWT_REFRESH_TOKEN_SECRET	Secret for signing refresh tokens
JWT_ACCESS_TOKEN_AND_COOKIE_EXPIRES_IN	Access token lifetime (e.g. 1d)
JWT_REFRESH_TOKEN_AND_COOKIE_EXPIRES_IN	Refresh token lifetime (e.g. 30d)
ACCESS_AND_REFRESH_TOKEN_COOKIE_SAME_SITE	Cookie SameSite policy (e.g. lax)

⚠️ Never put real credentials in server/.env.example — that file is tracked by git. Only server/.env is gitignored.

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Scripts & Commands

Run from the root directory

Starts the React frontend

npm run dev:client

Starts the Express backend

npm run dev:server

Starts both frontend and backend concurrently (if configured)

npm run dev:all

Make sure concurrently is installed if using npm run dev:all.

The frontend runs on http://localhost:5173 and the backend on http://localhost:5000.

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Running with Docker

The project ships with a full container setup, so you can run the entire stack without installing Node.js or matching versions locally.

Prerequisites

• Docker Engine + Docker Compose plugin
• On Windows/WSL2: Docker Desktop with WSL integration enabled for your distro
• server/.env must exist (see Configure Environment Variables) — Compose reads it at startup

Quick Start

docker compose up --build

Service	URL	Description
client	http://localhost:5173	React build served by nginx
server	http://localhost:5000	Express API

Wait for MongoDB connected in the server logs before using the app.

Common Commands

docker compose up -d --build   # rebuild and start in the background
docker compose logs -f server  # tail the backend logs
docker compose restart server  # restart after changing server/.env
docker compose down            # stop and remove containers

How It Works

• server/dockerfile — installs production dependencies on node:20-slim and runs the Express app as the non-root node user.
• client/dockerfile — multi-stage build: compiles the Vite bundle in Node, then serves the static output from a lightweight nginx:alpine image.
• client/nginx.conf — serves the SPA with a try_files ... /index.html fallback so deep links like /dashboard/profile work on refresh, and caches hashed assets.

Notes & Gotchas

Ports conflict with the dev servers. Docker binds 5000 and 5173, the same ports npm run dev:all uses. Stop the dev servers before running docker compose up, or remap the ports in docker-compose.yml.

VITE_API_BASE_URL is baked in at build time. Vite inlines import.meta.env values during npm run build, so this is passed as a build arg in docker-compose.yml, not a runtime environment variable. Changing it requires a rebuild:

docker compose up -d --build

It must also point at a host-reachable URL — the bundle runs in the user's browser, so http://server:5000 (the internal Compose hostname) will not resolve.

Source changes need a rebuild. Application code is copied into the images, so docker compose up alone won't pick up edits. Use npm run dev:all for day-to-day development with hot reload, and Docker for testing production builds and deployment.

injecting env (0) from .env in the logs is expected. server/.env is excluded from the image by .dockerignore; the real values are supplied by Compose's env_file.

MongoDB Atlas IP allowlist. Containers share your host's outbound IP, so your existing Atlas allowlist entry keeps working with no changes.