<aside> 💡 This is not a full-blown Technical Document, but rather in my own words a small overview of what went behind in making the GateArch website. If you have a question or want to know more, reach out to me at [email protected] as always.

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🗨️ Overview

GateArch is a platform where students can register to study better in preparation for architecture-related exams. People who run the website handcraft posts, and tests to provide these to students to help them before they actually go for a real exam. This means the environment must be as similar as possible to get them familiar with this process.

<aside> 💡 The entire GateArch website was previously hosted on a shared hosting account which was already provided by GateArch(Cognimize LLC) themselves, but later the shared host provider removed SSH access and I helped them to shift this all over to a VPS server.

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🛡️ Why this stack?

Before I start describing the application and process, Here is the reason why all the above choices in the stack were made.

• Laravel: This was one of the first large projects I was working on. This means I would have to take care of a lot of things. This includes everything from Auth and Security to DB Management. At this point, I’ve been Laravel for a while and used it in smaller projects also. It comes with so great things to help you focus on building the actual application rather than the boilerplate.
• Bootstrap: Even in 2019 this seems like an odd choice but I’ve been using Bootstrap since the V3 beta and I was familiar with it a lot. It helped me quickly architect the frontend. In my opinion, if you’re a person who cares for speed of development and mature-looking design set over fine grain control over design, Bootstrap is one of the best choices. In 2023 I moved to Tailwind and even if given a choice today I would have preferred Tailwind. As
• jQuery: jQuery provides a clear and concise syntax on top of javascript to manipulate dom or do small interactions without needing to write the whole page in a SPA-like manner. Server-rendered pages have good speed and SEO whereas jQuery helps to add that little bits of interactivity to make it feel snappier.
• Vuejs: Dashboard(Admin, Student) and Exam Portal use Vuejs as it’s easier to maintain them in a SPA-like manner. Complex states and logic can be managed without DOM manipulating too much. Dashboard also doesn't need SEO so server rendering does not provide any benefits here. Also, heavy client interactions like in the Exam Portal are easy with frameworks like Vuejs
• MariaDB/MySQL: Considering entire application needs can be entirely modeled using Relational Model. MySQL is just simply a widely available and mature choice. Even in 2023 goto choice for DB is always MySQL unless I need to do something that is hugely niche like storing vector embeddings, etc.
• Git: Every programmer from the beginning MUST use version control and preferably git. I can not count how many times it helped to quickly implement a feature on one branch and discard it if I did not like it. I also upgraded the whole Laravel version on one branch with Gaterach without affecting the Prod branch and once it was all done merged it back to prod everything without breaking a sweat.
• As for server hardware, I’m simply being pragmatic. GateArch is an emerging startup and should focus on bringing on the users and not thinking about complex architecture around scaling unless it needs it etc. A simple VPS server alongside Nginx is what keeps costs low until they need to scale up. This should be enough for thousands of users. Once they actually grow to size then they can move to the environment like AWS.

🛠️ Architectural Strategy

The entire Application was divided into 4 parts as follows