JooBlog

A full-stack blogging platform, built as a DevOps learning project. The app itself (write posts, comment, upload media, admin panel) is just the vehicle — the real point of this repo is practicing how to containerize, deploy, and provision a real application end-to-end:

• Writing multi-stage Dockerfiles for a Node API and a React SPA
• Wiring services together with docker-compose and an nginx reverse proxy
• Provisioning real AWS infrastructure with Terraform, split into reusable modules and per-environment stacks (dev / staging / prod)
• Practicing 12-factor config (env vars, secrets, .env files) instead of hardcoding values

Architecture

                     ┌──────────────────────┐
                     │        Browser       │
                     └──────────┬───────────┘
                                │ :80 / :443
                     ┌──────────▼────────────┐
                     │   frontend (nginx)    │  React SPA (static build)
                     │   proxies /api → ─────┼────┐
                     └───────────────────────┘    │
                                                  │ :5000
                     ┌────────────────────────┐   │
                     │  backend (Node/Express)│◄──┘
                     │   REST API + JWT auth  │
                     └──────────┬─────────────┘
                                │ :27017
                     ┌──────────▼─────────────┐
                     │        MongoDB         │
                     └────────────────────────┘

              Media/uploads → AWS S3 (via backend)

Locally, all of this is run with docker-compose. In AWS, the same shape is provisioned with Terraform: the frontend build goes to S3 + CloudFront, the backend runs on EC2/compute behind an ALB, and MongoDB is replaced by DocumentDB — see terraform/README.md.

Repo layout

.
├── backend/     # Node.js + TypeScript + Express + MongoDB API
├── frontend/    # React + TypeScript + Vite SPA
├── docker/      # Dockerfiles, nginx config, docker-compose for local dev
└── terraform/   # AWS infrastructure as code (modules + per-env stacks)

Each folder has its own README with more detail:

• backend/README.md
• frontend/README.md
• docker/README.md
• terraform/README.md

Running it locally

cd docker
docker compose up --build

• Frontend: http://localhost:5173
• Backend API: http://localhost:5000/api
• MongoDB: localhost:27017

Copy backend/.env.example to backend/.env (if present) and fill in real secrets (JWT_ACCESS_SECRET, JWT_REFRESH_SECRET, AWS credentials for S3 uploads) before running in anything beyond a throwaway local setup — the compose file ships with obviously-fake defaults.

Deploying to AWS

Infrastructure lives entirely in terraform/. See that folder's README for the module breakdown and how to stand up dev, staging, or prod.