Creativity Freaks

Creativity Freaks is a modern, fully responsive, and feature-rich e-learning platform designed to connect students, instructors, and administrators in an interactive online learning environment. The platform supports both free and paid courses, a vibrant community system, and role-based user management.

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Table of Contents

• Project Overview
• Features
• Technologies Used
• Project Status
• Installation and Setup
• Project Structure
• Future Enhancements
• Contributing
• License
• Contact

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Project Overview

Creativity Freaks aims to provide a seamless and engaging platform for learners and instructors. It includes:

• Secure authentication with role-based access (Student, Instructor, Admin).
• Course browsing and filtering by categories and subcategories.
• Interactive community system where users can post questions, comment, and like/dislike posts.
• Personalized dashboards showing enrolled courses and learning progress.
• Support for both free and paid courses.
• Real-time notifications for user interactions.
• Dark/light UI mode toggle for better user experience.

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Features

• User Authentication & Roles: Secure login and registration with session management, supporting Student, Instructor, and Admin roles.
• Responsive UI: Mobile-friendly, adaptive layouts with smooth animations.
• Course Management: View and filter courses by category and subcategory.
• Community Interaction: Post questions, comment with text and images, and like/dislike both posts and comments using AJAX.
• User Dashboards: Show enrolled courses, progress bars, and personalized info.
• Notification System: Users receive notifications for likes and comments on their posts.
• Dark/Light Mode: Toggle between light and dark themes.
• Animated Login/Register Modals: Smooth modal animations for authentication forms.
• Modular PHP Architecture: Reusable components with includes for header, footer, and layout.

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Technologies Used

Creativity Freaks

A modern, responsive e‑learning platform connecting students, instructors, and admins with courses, community, and payments — built with PHP, MySQL, and vanilla JS.

— Beautiful UX, pragmatic PHP, and a clean modular structure.

Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Tech Stack
• Architecture
• Getting Started
• Environment & Config
• Database Setup
• Notifications
• Security & Hardening
• Project Structure
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• License

Overview

Creativity Freaks provides:

• Role‑based access (Student, Instructor, Admin)
• Course browsing and enrollment
• Community posts, comments, and likes
• Instructor tools and dashboards
• Payments via SSLCommerz
• Email via PHPMailer
• In‑app notifications

Features

• Auth & Roles: Secure login/register, session-backed roles.
• Courses: Browse, details view, enrollment flows.
• Community: Posts, threaded comments, likes, AJAX interactions.
• Dashboards: Personalized student/instructor panels.
• Notifications: Bell menu with recent items and unread counts.
• Payments: SSLCommerz success/fail/cancel flows.
• Email: Transactional emails via PHPMailer.
• Responsive UI: Mobile-first styling and animations.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript (fetch/AJAX)
• Backend: PHP (procedural with includes)
• Database: MySQL (mysqli prepared statements)
• Infra: Apache (XAMPP/LAMPP)
• Payments: SSLCommerz
• Mail: PHPMailer

Architecture

• includes/ contains common building blocks (DB, layout/header/footer, auth guard, notifications API).
• pages/ holds route-like views (and nested areas: admin/, instructor/, community/).
• assets/ hosts CSS/JS, with JS modules calling backend endpoints.
• ajax/ and some includes/ files serve as lightweight JSON endpoints.

Getting Started

1. Clone

git clone https://github.com/hcsarker/creativityfreaks.git
cd creativityfreaks

2. Place in web root

• Linux (LAMPP): /opt/lampp/htdocs/creativityfreaks
• Windows (XAMPP): C:\xampp\htdocs\creativityfreaks

3. Env config

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env to match your local DB

4. Create database

CREATE DATABASE creativity_freaks CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

5. Import schema

• If you have an SQL dump, import it via phpMyAdmin or CLI.

6. Visit the app

http://localhost/creativityfreaks/

Environment & Config

• .env is loaded by includes/env.php (no external deps).
• DB vars used by includes/db.php with safe defaults:
  • CF_DB_HOST, CF_DB_NAME, CF_DB_USER, CF_DB_PASS
• Example file: .env.example

Database Setup

• Uses MySQL with mysqli prepared statements.
• Ensure proper indexes on users, notifications, posts, comments.
• Character set: utf8mb4 (emoji safe).

Notifications

• API: includes/notifications.php returns JSON list + unread count.
• Mark read: includes/mark_read.php (POST) marks individual items read.
• Frontend: assets/js/notifications.js renders a dropdown and updates counts.
• Behavior: An item is marked read when clicked (not on open) for accuracy.

Security & Hardening

Implemented in this repo:

• Secure sessions: includes/init.php sets HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax, and Secure (when HTTPS).
• CSRF protection: Token generation + verification helpers in includes/init.php.
  • Tokens added to forms (login/register) and AJAX requests (mark read).
• Safer DB errors: includes/db.php logs connection errors without exposing details.
• Output escaping: htmlspecialchars() used on dynamic content in templates.

Recommended next steps:

• Add pagination on long lists (e.g., instructor notifications).
• Cover all POST endpoints with CSRF checks.
• Uploads hardening: validate mime/extension, randomized names, restrict execution.
• Basic rate limiting for login to slow brute‑force attempts.
• Centralized error logging/monitoring (e.g., file logs).

Project Structure

.
├── ajax/
├── assets/
│   ├── css/
│   └── js/
├── auth/
├── includes/
│   ├── env.php
│   ├── init.php
│   ├── db.php
│   ├── header.php
│   ├── footer.php
│   ├── layout.php
│   ├── notifications.php
│   └── mark_read.php
├── pages/
│   ├── community/
│   └── instructor/
├── payment/
├── uploads/
└── index.php

Roadmap

• Instructor/admin dashboards: complete CRUD and analytics.
• Global CSRF coverage and validation layer.
• Uploads scanning & serving via non-executable locations.
• Real-time enhancements: optional websockets or SSE for notifications.
• Localization (Bangla/English) and accessibility.

Contributing

PRs welcome! Please:

• Write clear commits and keep changes focused.
• Escape output and use prepared statements.
• Add docs for new endpoints or UI.

License

MIT

Contact

We welcome feedback, feature requests, and contributions from the community. Join us in shaping the future of online learning with Creativity Freaks!

Hridoy Chandra Sarker
Email: hcsarker2002@gmail.com
GitHub: https://github.com/hcsarker LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hridoy-chandra-sarker —

Bangla (Quick Note): এই প্রোজেক্টটি একটি ফুল-স্ট্যাক ই-লার্নিং প্ল্যাটফর্ম। লোকাল সেটআপ করতে .env কনফিগার করুন, ডাটাবেস তৈরি করে ইমপোর্ট দিন, তারপর http://localhost/creativityfreaks/ ভিজিট করুন। সিকিউরিটি হিসেবে সেশন/CSRF যুক্ত করা হয়েছে; বাকি POST এন্ডপয়েন্টগুলোতেও ধাপে ধাপে কভার করা হবে।