Capture Academy

🔹 Project Overview

Capture Academy is a full-stack web application designed to manage a summer camp learning academy ecosystem where students can enroll in photography classes through secure online payments, instructors can create and manage courses, and administrators can moderate users and content through a powerful control panel. The platform focuses on role-based access, payment integrity, and smooth administrative workflows.

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🔹 Problem Statement

Managing class enrollments, instructor onboarding, and payments in academies is often fragmented and manual, leading to errors, delayed approvals, and poor user experience. Additionally, ensuring secure payments while maintaining proper role separation between students, instructors, and administrators is a common challenge.

This project solves these problems by introducing:

• A centralized, role-based platform

• Secure card-based online payments

• Controlled class approval workflows

• Full administrative authority over users and content

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🔹 Role & Responsibility

Role: Full-Stack Developer
Ownership: Complete ownership from design to deployment

• Designed the system architecture and data flow

• Developed frontend UI, dashboards, and routing

• Built backend APIs and role-based authorization

• Integrated Stripe payment processing

• Implemented admin moderation and user management features

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🔹 Core Features

👨‍🎓 Student Experience

• Browse approved classes with detailed information

• Enroll in classes using secure card-based payments

• Access personalized dashboard with enrollment status

• Default role assigned to every new user for safety and access control

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👨‍🏫 Instructor Dashboard

• Create and update class listings

• Track class approval status (pending / approved / denied)

• Receive structured feedback from admins for rejected classes

• Restricted from publishing content without approval

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🛡️ Admin Dashboard

• Approve or deny instructor-submitted classes with feedback

• Dynamically change user roles (student ↔ instructor ↔ admin)

• Block, unblock, or permanently delete users

• Maintain platform integrity and content quality

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🔹 Payment System (Stripe Integration)

• Implemented Stripe SDK with card-based checkout

• Payment details (card number, CVC, expiry) are collected securely on the frontend

• Backend creates and processes payments using Stripe APIs

• Enrollment status is updated only after successful payment confirmation

• No webhook dependency — backend-driven payment confirmation ensures control flow simplicity

This approach ensures secure transactions and prevents unpaid enrollments.

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🔹 Technology Stack

Frontend

• React.js with reusable components

• React Router for multi-dashboard routing

• Tailwind CSS & DaisyUI for responsive UI

• TanStack Query for efficient server-state management

• Dynamic document titles per page for better UX and SEO

• AOS, Swiper, React Awesome Slider for modern UI interactions

Backend

• Node.js & Express.js for RESTful APIs

• MongoDB for flexible document-based storage

• JWT for authentication and role-based authorization

Services

• Firebase Authentication for identity management

• Stripe SDK for payment processing

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🔹 Architecture & Design Decisions

• Implemented role-based access control (RBAC) with JWT to isolate dashboards and protect routes.

• Designed admin-controlled workflows to prevent unauthorized publishing of classes.

• Used TanStack Query to minimize redundant API calls and improve perceived performance.

• Structured backend APIs to support future scalability (additional roles, analytics, reports).

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🔹 Challenges & Solutions

Challenge: Ensuring only approved classes are visible and purchasable.
Solution: Introduced an admin approval layer with backend validation before class visibility and payment eligibility.

Challenge: Managing multiple user roles safely within one application.
Solution: Defaulted all users to “student” role and allowed only admins to change roles or restrict access.

Challenge: Keeping payment and enrollment state consistent.
Solution: Backend-controlled Stripe payment confirmation updates enrollment status only after successful transactions.

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🔹 Security & Reliability

• JWT-secured APIs with role-based middleware

• Protected frontend routes per user role

• Secure handling of payment data via Stripe SDK

• Admin-only critical actions (role change, user deletion, blocking)

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🔹 Business & Platform Impact

• Reduced manual coordination between admins and instructors

• Improved enrollment reliability through verified payments

• Enabled scalable academy operations with centralized control

• Delivered a clean, modern UX for all user roles