Auth and Profiles

I added a proper authentication mechanism and the ability for users to view each others profiles, as well as edit their own!

Authentication

Users can create and log into their accounts. An OTP is sent to the user’s email during creation, and expires in 10 minutes. A password reset mechanism also exists and also uses OTPs.

Profiles

I added a profiles page that allows users to see each others profiles! For now, the profiles display the user’s name, role, event track, bio, avatar, and awards! A separate award_medal.php exists but it is only accessible to admins to give awards.

Setup

I set up my Hack Club Nest VM by installing MariaDB to hold relational data; Cloudflared to tunnel traffic from my domain to the server; and Nginx to host the web server itself.

Architecture

For whatever reason, I have an affinity towards older software, so I decided to use a PHP backend for this website. Usually, PHP is paired with an Apache web server, but I decided to use Nginx instead because it is non-blocking and even-driven, so it doesn’t use up as much memory (mainly cuz I only have 2 GB of RAM on the VM ).

I guess that makes this an LNMP stack? Idk.

Mail!

So I’m planning on having a password reset mechanism and automated email notifications, so I needed something more secure than PHP’s native mail() function. I chose to use PHPMailer with Brevo as the SMTP service provider because they offer a very generous free tier.

Stuff I Gotta Work On

• The emails are going to my junk folder?
• The emails are also getting wrapped in a really odd way