Forum application developed with Django, PostgreSQL, Celery, and Redis

The application is deployed using Heroku and is available here.

The website was developed for learning purposes. The focus was on the backend side. The app consists of several functionality groups:

• User registration:
  • Sign up
  • Login / Logout
  • Email validation
  • Password reset
  • Password change
• User profiles
• Messages between users
• Forum with categories, topics, and posts
• User feeds

The following major technologies were used:

• Django 3.0.3
• PostgreSQL 11.7
• Celery 4.4.2
• Redis 3.0.6
• Boostrap 4.4.1
• jQuery 3.4.1

1. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/dfesenko/django-forum.git. Go inside the django-forum folder: cd django-forum.
2. Create a virtual environment: python -m venv venv.
3. Activate virtual environment: source venv/bin/activate.
4. Install dependencies into the virtual environment: pip install -r requirements.txt.
5. Install Redis: sudo apt update, sudo apt install redis-server.
6. Run Redis (in a separate Terminal window): redis-server.
7. Set the credentials for your email that you want to use for sending emails for users. This should be done in the forum/settings.py file (find variables that start from the word EMAIL).
8. Create a PostgreSQL database.
9. Set credentials for the database in the forum/settings.py file (inside the DATABASES parameter.
10. Perform migrations: python manage.py makemigrations, python manage.py migrate.
11. Run Celery workers (in a separate Terminal window, but with activated virtual environment and from the django-forum/ directory): celery worker -A forum --loglevel=debug --concurrency=4.
12. Run Django server: python manage.py runserver.
13. The application should be available in the browser: localhost:8000.

• Index page has information about 5 latest updated topics, 5 new topics, and 5 most popular topics. If the user is a superuser, the index page also provides a list with all registered users (for convenience during development).

• Forum page has a button for new topic creation and the dropdown menu for selecting the category. If no category is selected, all existing topics are displayed ordered by the last updated date. There is also information about topics authors, dates of creation, and the number of posts in each of the topics.

• To create new topic user needs to click on the corresponding button, specify the category and topic name, and write the text of the first post.

• Each topic has a form for adding new posts. Posts are ordered by the date of creation. Users can subscribe and unsubscribe to the topic. Subscription is for user's feed. Users can like or dislike each post published by other users.

• User's feed is the place where all new posts from the topics the user is subscribed to are displayed (except those posts that are published by the user). User can mark posts as "Read" to remove them from the feed.

• Mails section of the website is for direct communication between users. There are inbox, outbox, and bucket (a place where deleted messages are stored before the user decides to delete them permanently). Messages can be marked as read or unread for the user's convenience. Messages from the bucket can be deleted permanently or restored.

• Message page contains information about the particular message: sender, receiver, date, subject, message body. Also, all actions with messages (deleting, restoring, marking as read, reply) can be performed there.

• Each user's profile page contains information about the user: first name, last name, username, location, "About me" section, amount of posts published by the user on the forum, latest forum activity, user's avatar. Note, that some information could be missed if the user didn't specify it. To send a message to the user press the corresponding button in the profile page of the needed user.

• It is possible to access more detailed information about the users forum activity from the user's profile page. There you can see user's posts with dates, topics, votes, and posts body.

• If the user views his/her own profile, it is possible to edit it (edit or add information, upload avatar) or change password.

• It is possible to reset users passwords if they forgot them.

• When a new user is signing up, he/she should verify the account by following the link from the email. Emails are sent asynchronously, by using Celery with Redis backend.

• PostgreSQL is the database that this application uses. Django ORM is used for interaction with the database.

• jQuery library is used for performing AJAX requests in liking/disliking features, as well as for in subscribing/unsubscribing features.

• Bootstrap is used for providing a basic user interface. django-crispy-forms package was used to ensure seamless integration between Django and Bootstrap when building web forms.

• There are tests for models and views in discussions app.