jsurrea / PicScape

Picscape is a Django-based web application for photo sharing, featuring user registration, image posting, a feed of published photos, and a like functionality.

PicScape

PicScape is a social media platform built with Django that allows users to share and discover photos. It provides a user-friendly interface for uploading, liking, and commenting on photos, as well as following other users to stay updated with their posts. It can be easily deployed on your local machine to create your own private picture network!

Table of Contents

• About
• Features
• Demo
• Installation
• Usage
• Contributing
• License

About

PicScape is a project designed to showcase the power of Django in building a modern web application. It focuses on the following key aspects:

• User Authentication: Secure user registration and login.
• User Profiles: Customizable user profiles with profile pictures and biographies.
• Photo Sharing: Easy photo uploading, liking, and commenting.
• Social Interaction: Following other users to create a personalized feed.

Features

• User registration and authentication.
• User profiles with profile pictures, biographies, and post counts.
• Photo uploading with automatic resizing and storage.
• Liking and commenting (coming soon!) on photos.
• User-to-user following for a personalized feed.
• Responsive design for a seamless user experience on different devices.

Demo

You can see a live demo of PicScape at https://ec2-54-152-101-7.compute-1.amazonaws.com.

This project also comes configured with a preloaded SQLite database and media files. You can try a full demo with artificial data by installing the app without changing the database settings. The demo comes with 3 users: JessiTrips, DogWorld and Bob&Sons. There's also an admin user for accesing the superuser dashboard. All of them have their passwords set to 1234. Here are some reference pictures that highlight features of this project:

Admin

Feed

Profile

Update

Installation

Follow these steps to set up PicScape on your machine:

VM configuration

Follow the deployment installation guide here for complete instructions on setting up the proyect on a Linux VPS with a cloud provider. Learn how to configure a PostgreSQL database, a NGINX web server and to run the Django project with Gunicorn.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have the following prerequisites installed:

• Python 3.7+
• Django 4.2+
• PostgreSQL (or any other database of your choice)

Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/jsurrea/PicScape

Create a Virtual Environment (Optional)

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On macOS and Linux
venv\Scripts\activate     # On Windows

Install Dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Configure Database

Create a PostgreSQL database and update the database settings in picscape/settings.py.

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
        'NAME': os.environ.get('PICSCAPE_DB_NAME'),
        'USER': os.environ.get('PICSCAPE_DB_USER'),
        'PASSWORD': os.environ.get('PICSCAPE_DB_PASSWORD'),
        'HOST': os.environ.get('PICSCAPE_DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
        'PORT': os.environ.get('PICSCAPE_DB_PORT', '5432'),
    }
}

Remember to delete the preloaded SQLite database db.sqlite3 and the media image contents saved at media/posts/photos and media/users/pictures.

Apply Migrations

python manage.py migrate

Create a Superuser (access to admin site)

python manage.py createsuperuser

Run the Development Server

python manage.py runserver

PicScape should now be running locally at http://localhost:8000/.

Usage

• Access the admin panel at http://localhost:8000/admin/ to manage users, photos, and other data.
• Sign up for a new user account and start exploring the photo-sharing features.
• Customize your user profile by adding a profile picture and biography.
• Follow other users to see their posts in your personalized feed.
• Upload photos, like them, and leave comments to interact with the PicScape community.

Contributing

We welcome contributions to make PicScape even better! If you'd like to contribute, please follow these guidelines:

1. Fork the repository and create a new branch for your feature or bug fix.
2. Make your changes and test thoroughly.
3. Create a pull request with a clear description of your changes and why they are necessary.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.