Welcome to MasteryHub, your go-to platform for mentorship and skill development. This application connects mentees with experienced mentors across various fields, offering personalized guidance, live session booking, and community-powered learning.
🚀 Live Demo · GitHub Repository
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| 🎓 Mentor Matching | Intelligent matching algorithm pairs mentees with the right expert |
| 📅 Session Booking | Browse and book live mentorship sessions in real time |
| 💳 Secure Payments | Stripe-powered checkout with email confirmation |
| 👤 User Profiles | Full mentor and mentee profiles with skills, achievements & availability |
| 💬 Discussion Forums | Community Q&A and knowledge sharing |
| 🔍 Smart Search | Search mentors and sessions by skill, category, or keyword |
| 🔒 Authentication | Email + Google OAuth2 login via Django-Allauth |
| 📊 Dashboards | Separate expert and mentee dashboards with activity tracking |
Some features are available exclusively to registered users — including the dashboard, session booking, and mentorship requests.
- MasteryHub: Skill-Sharing Platform for Professionals
- UX
- Features
- Existing Features
- My Account Dropdown
- User Sign Up Page
- User Sign In Page
- User Sign Out Page
- User Profile Page
- Dropdown Menu Content
- Basket Page
- Checkout Page
- Models
- Future Features
- Design
- Business Model
- Marketing Strategy
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Main Technologies
- Frameworks Used
- Libraries And Installed Packages
- Tools And Resources
- Testing
- Bugs
- Credits
- Professionals seeking to acquire new skills.
- Experts looking to share their knowledge and mentor others.
- Individuals interested in continuous learning and career advancement.
- Enabling users to easily find and join skill-sharing sessions.
- Facilitating seamless mentor-mentee matching.
- Providing users with the ability to create and manage their learning profiles.
- Allowing users to track their skill development progress.
- Offering users the ability to provide and receive feedback on sessions.
- Develop a functional skill-sharing platform.
- Incorporate comprehensive features for an engaging and educational experience.
- Apply knowledge gained from previous projects to make this platform more advanced.
- Introduce new elements, such as mentorship programs and Q&A forums, to enhance interactivity.
- Ensure a user-friendly interface for easy navigation and a seamless learning experience.
My project followed an agile planning approach, based on user stories. Each user story was meticulously planned and included in a specific iteration.
To prioritize development efforts, features were categorized as Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't Have. This classification helped determine the importance of each feature.
The skill-sharing section took precedence as the primary focus of the platform, receiving the most attention and time for completion.
The Project board here.
- Based on the collected and studied user stories, a project implementation plan was developed. You can read user stories here.
- To facilitate the design of the website, I created wireframes for every page. Adhering to best practices, wireframes were crafted for mobile and desktop dimensions. Balsamiq was employed as the tool for creating the site's wireframes.
Click to view wireframes
Note: Mobile wireframes will be developed in a future iteration of the project, focusing on responsive design principles to ensure optimal user experience across all devices.
- I created an entity relationship diagram (ERD) for my Django project using Graphviz and Django Extensions. This visual guide has streamlined my development process by clearly representing the connections between data structures.
- Designing a captivating homepage with striking hero images that clearly convey the website's purpose to visitors.
- Implementing user account registration for secure access to content editing, profile management, and efficient checkout with saved user information.
- Developing a fully responsive website to ensure smooth functionality across all devices and optimized navigation for mobile users.
- Equipping superusers with the ability to create, view, update, and delete reviews for both users and products.
The Home page of this online resource is an attractive and informative landing page, designed to capture users' attention.
The Skill-Sharing Sessions page allows users to explore and register for various sessions. Prompts to log in or register if not authorized.
- The footer is consistently present on every page, featuring links to Contact, Returns, Privacy Policies, and an email address.
- Additionally, the footer incorporates our newsletter signup, powered by MailChimp. This ensures its visibility on every page, maximizing the likelihood of visitors subscribing.
- On the contact page, concise information is presented using small icons for quick and easy comprehension, including a phone number, address, and email.
- Additionally, the page includes a contact form enabling users to reach out to the business. The information submitted through this form is stored in the Admin panel, ensuring easy access for staff to review.
- At the very top, there is an information board in which a motivational phrase is used as a call to action which is updated every three seconds. It also has a user login option.
- Throughout the site, the user has access to the main navigation menu. Features include a search bar, account/profile access, cart link and subtotal if the user has added items to their carts. Once logged in, users have access to the dashboard page.
- Certain pages are accessible only to users who have logged in. Links to these pages are displayed in the Navbar exclusively when a user is logged in.
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Authenticated Users:
- Admin Dashboard: Link visible to superusers.
- Mentee Dashboard: Visible to non-expert users.
- Mentor Matching: Link to mentor matching page.
- My Profile: Link to the user's profile.
- Logout: Link to log out.
- Expert Dashboard: Visible to expert users.
- Manage Mentorship Requests: Link to manage mentorship requests.
-
Unauthenticated Users:
- Login: Link to login page.
- Sign Up: Link to registration page.
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Access: The basket can be accessed from the main navigation menu. It displays the running total of items.
-
Basket Details: Displays items in the basket, individual prices, subtotals for multiple quantities, and quantity adjustment buttons.
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Empty Basket: If no items are in the basket, a message prompts users to continue shopping.
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Quantity Adjustment: Users can adjust the quantity of each session or remove the item.
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Action Buttons: Users can proceed to checkout.
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Checkout Process: Includes a form for payment information, and a summary of the order. Logged-in users can save shipping details for future orders.
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Order Summary: Shows cart items, quantities, and total cost.
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Payment Information: Users must enter payment details, processed through Stripe.
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Completion: Displays buttons for setting up a cart or placing an order, and the total amount to be charged.
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Confirmation Email: After completing the order, users receive a confirmation email with the order number and receipt.
- Payment: Stores payment information including user, amount, date, and associated session.
- Cart: Represents the user's cart.
- CartItem: Links products to a cart with a quantity.
- Order: Stores order details including user, address, and total amounts.
- If a user lands on a page that either doesn't exist or that they shouldn't be on (a regular user using links on an admin page or trying to edit/delete something from a link), they will be shown an error message and button to return to sessions or home.
-
If I had extra time, I would implement several new features on the site. Currently, session ratings are simply random numbers entered when adding a session through the settings file. However, I want users to also be able to give a session rating, calculated as an average.
-
There are also plans to implement functionality that allows you to display the number of sessions held and their popularity in the administrative panel, as well as provide information about the availability of sessions by skill.
- The following colors were chosen for the website:
- Primary-color (#4285F4)
- Secondary-color (#34A853)
- Accent-color (#FBBC05)
- Text-color (#333333)
- Background-color (#FFFFFF)
- The site chose the GT Walsheim Pro font due to its excellent readability, modern design, and versatility.
This online resource follows a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) model, offering sessions for purchase directly to consumers. It simplifies the payment process for both registered and unregistered users, while providing extra features for registered users and newsletter subscribers.
This Facebook page primarily aims to inform followers about new sessions, notify subscribers about offers and promotions, and place targeted advertisements.
In the footer of the website is a Mailchimp newsletter in the footer which is used to send emails to subscribers about the latest products, promotions, and discounts.
Keywords were analyzed and added to the description of the online platform on the main page of the site.
- Skills/expertise sharing
- Professional development
- Career mentorship
- Online learning
- Upskilling/reskilling
- skill sharing, share skills, share expertise
- professional development, career growth, career advancement
- mentorship, mentor, mentee, coaching
- online learning, virtual training, e-learning
- upskilling, reskilling, learn new skills
- Searched each potential keyword to see related searches and suggestions
- Took note of longer keyword phrases that seemed relevant
- Paid attention to the types of results (courses, services, etc.)
- Kept some of the shorter, head terms like "skill sharing"
- Added more specific long-tail phrases like "find a career mentor"
- Tried to cover different potential use cases
- Used WordTracker to get volume and competition metrics
- Prioritized keywords with higher search volume but moderate competition
- Weeded out keywords that didn't seem clearly relevant
This resulted in the final list of 10-15 keywords spanning general topics as well as more specific, long-tail phrases related to skills sharing, mentorship, online learning, and professional development for careers.
I created a sitemap using XML-Sitemaps on my live website https://masteryhub.yoseph.dev/
The XML that was created is in the root directory of the website.
The robots.txt file was created using this guide https://www.conductor.com/academy/robotstxt/.
- coverage - Used for running automated tests.
- crispy-bootstrap4 - Template pack used for django-crispy-forms.
- django-crispy-forms - Used to render forms throughout the project.
- dj-database-url - A package used to utilize DATABASE_URL environment variable.
- django-allauth - Allows authentication, registration, and account management in Django.
- django-countries, v7.2.1 - Django application used to provide country choices for use with forms, and a country field for models.
- gunicorn - A Python WSGI HTTP Server for UNIX.
- psycopg2 - A PostgreSQL database adapter.
- boto3 - An Amazon Web Services (AWS) software development kit (SDK) used to connect to the S3 bucket.
- Black - A Python code formatter.
- django storages - Collection of custom storage backends for Django.
- stripe - A Python library for Stripe's API.
For all testing, please refer to the TESTING.md file.
- Boutique Ado Walkthrough Project
- I Think Therefore I Blog Walkthrough Project
- Tasks Walkthrough Project
- Sportswear
The live deployed application can be found at masteryhub.yoseph.dev, deployed via Coolify.
This project now uses Neon for the PostgreSQL database.
To obtain your own Postgres database on Neon, follow these steps:
- Sign up at Neon.tech using your GitHub or email.
- Click Create a new project to set up a database.
- Provide a project name and select PostgreSQL version (latest recommended).
- Choose the Free Tier plan if you're just getting started.
- Select a Region closest to you for better performance.
- Once created, go to the Connection Details to find your database URL, username, password, and other credentials.
Use the provided connection string in your application's environment variables to connect to the Neon database:
This project uses AWS to store media and static files online, keeping static and media assets on a reliable CDN separate from the application container.
Once you've created an AWS account and logged in, follow these series of steps to get your project connected. Make sure you're on the AWS Management Console page.
-
Search for S3.
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Create a new bucket, give it a name (e.g.
masteryhub-static), and choose the region closest to you. -
Uncheck Block all public access, and acknowledge that the bucket will be public (required for serving static and media files).
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From Object Ownership, make sure to have ACLs enabled, and Bucket owner preferred selected.
-
From the Properties tab, turn on static website hosting, and type
index.htmlanderror.htmlin their respective fields, then click Save. -
From the Permissions tab, paste in the following CORS configuration:
[ { "AllowedHeaders": [ "Authorization" ], "AllowedMethods": [ "GET" ], "AllowedOrigins": [ "*" ], "ExposeHeaders": [] } ] -
Copy your ARN string.
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From the Bucket Policy tab, select the Policy Generator link, and use the following steps:
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Policy Type: S3 Bucket Policy
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Effect: Allow
-
Principal:
* -
Actions: GetObject
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Amazon Resource Name (ARN): paste-your-ARN-here
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Click Add Statement
-
Click Generate Policy
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Copy the entire Policy, and paste it into the Bucket Policy Editor
{ "Id": "Policy1234567890", "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "Stmt1234567890", "Action": [ "s3:GetObject" ], "Effect": "Allow", "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*" "Principal": "*", } ] } -
Before you click "Save", add
/*to the end of the Resource key in the Bucket Policy Editor (like above). -
Click Save.
-
-
From the Access Control List (ACL) section, click "Edit" and enable List for Everyone (public access), and accept the warning box.
- If the edit button is disabled, you need to change the Object Ownership section above to ACLs enabled (mentioned above).
Back on the AWS Services Menu, search for and open IAM (Identity and Access Management). Once on the IAM page, follow these steps:
-
From User Groups, click Create New Group.
- Suggested Name:
group-skill-sharing(group + the project name)
- Suggested Name:
-
Tags are optional, but you must click it to get to the review policy page.
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From User Groups, select your newly created group, and go to the Permissions tab.
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Open the Add Permissions dropdown, and click Attach Policies.
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Select the policy, then click Add Permissions at the bottom when finished.
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From the JSON tab, select the Import Managed Policy link.
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Search for S3, select the
AmazonS3FullAccesspolicy, and then Import. -
You'll need your ARN from the S3 Bucket copied again, which is pasted into "Resources" key on the Policy.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "s3:*", "Resource": [ "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name", "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*" ] } ] } -
Click Review Policy.
-
Suggested Name:
policy-skill-sharing(policy + the project name) -
Provide a description:
- "Access to S3 Bucket for skill-sharing static files."
-
Click Create Policy.
-
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From User Groups, click your "group-skill-sharing".
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Click Attach Policy.
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Search for the policy you've just created ("policy-skill-sharing") and select it, then Attach Policy.
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From User Groups, click Add User.
- Suggested Name:
user-skill-sharing(user + the project name)
- Suggested Name:
-
For "Select AWS Access Type", select Programmatic Access.
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Select the group to add your new user to:
group-skill-sharing -
Tags are optional, but you must click it to get to the review user page.
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Click Create User once done.
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You should see a button to Download .csv, so click it to save a copy on your system.
- IMPORTANT: once you pass this page, you cannot come back to download it again, so do it immediately!
- This contains the user's Access key ID and Secret access key.
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID= Access key IDAWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY= Secret access key
- Make sure
USE_AWS=Trueis set in your environment variables so that AWS will handle the static files. - Back within S3, create a new folder called:
media. - Select any existing media images for your project to prepare them for being uploaded into the new folder.
- Under Manage Public Permissions, select Grant public read access to this object(s).
- No further settings are required, so click Upload.
This project uses Stripe to handle the ecommerce payments.
Once you've created a Stripe account and logged in, follow these series of steps to get your project connected.
- From your Stripe dashboard, click to expand the "Get your test API keys".
- You'll have two keys here:
STRIPE_PUBLIC_KEY= Publishable Key (starts with pk)STRIPE_SECRET_KEY= Secret Key (starts with sk)
As a backup, in case users prematurely close the purchase-order page during payment, we can include Stripe Webhooks.
- From your Stripe dashboard, click Developers, and select Webhooks.
- From there, click Add Endpoint.
https://your-domain.com/checkout/wh/
- Click receive all events.
- Click Add Endpoint to complete the process.
- You'll have a new key here:
STRIPE_WH_SECRET= Signing Secret (Wehbook) Key (starts with wh)
This project uses Gmail to handle sending emails to users for account verification and purchase order confirmations.
Once you've created a Gmail (Google) account and logged in, follow these series of steps to get your project connected.
- Click on the Account Settings (cog icon) in the top-right corner of Gmail.
- Click on the Accounts and Import tab.
- Within the section called "Change account settings", click on the link for Other Google Account settings.
- From this new page, select Security on the left.
- Select 2-Step Verification to turn it on. (verify your password and account)
- Once verified, select Turn On for 2FA.
- Navigate back to the Security page, and you'll see a new option called App passwords.
- This might prompt you once again to confirm your password and account.
- Select Mail for the app type.
- Select Other (Custom name) for the device type.
- Any custom name, such as "Django"
- You'll be provided with a 16-character password (API key).
- Save this somewhere locally, as you cannot access this key again later!
EMAIL_HOST_PASS= user's 16-character API keyEMAIL_HOST_USER= user's own personal Gmail email address
This project is deployed using Coolify, a self-hosted open-source PaaS that runs on your own server. Coolify builds the app from the included Dockerfile, manages a PostgreSQL database, and sits behind a Traefik reverse proxy that handles HTTPS automatically.
- A Linux server (VPS or dedicated) with at least 2 GB RAM and Docker installed.
- A domain name pointed at your server's IP address.
- Coolify installed on the server.
- In the Coolify dashboard, go to Resources → New Resource → Database → PostgreSQL.
- Give the database a name (e.g.
masteryhub-db) and click Deploy. - Once running, copy the Connection URL from the database's Configuration tab — it looks like
postgres://user:password@host:5432/dbname.
- Go to Resources → New Resource → Application → Public Repository (or connect your GitHub account for private repos).
- Paste your repository URL:
https://github.com/yosephdev/mastery-hub - Set the branch to
main. - Set Build Pack to
Dockerfile. Coolify will auto-detect theDockerfilein the repo root. - Set the Port to
8000. - Click Save (don't deploy yet — set env vars first).
Go to Environment Variables inside the application and add the following:
| Variable | Value |
|---|---|
SECRET_KEY |
A long random string — generate with python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(50))" |
DEBUG |
False |
ALLOWED_HOSTS |
your-domain.com,www.your-domain.com |
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS |
https://your-domain.com,https://www.your-domain.com |
SITE_DOMAIN |
your-domain.com |
DATABASE_URL |
Connection URL copied from Step 1 |
USE_AWS |
True |
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID |
From your IAM user credentials |
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY |
From your IAM user credentials |
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME |
Your S3 bucket name (default: skill-sharing) |
AWS_S3_REGION_NAME |
Your S3 bucket region (default: eu-west-1) |
STRIPE_PUBLIC_KEY |
Publishable key from Stripe Dashboard |
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY |
Secret key from Stripe Dashboard |
STRIPE_WH_SECRET |
Webhook signing secret from Stripe Dashboard |
POSTMARK_ACCESS_KEY |
Server token from Postmark |
POSTMARK_SECRET_KEY |
Server token from Postmark (same value) |
SOCIALACCOUNT_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID |
From Google Cloud Console |
SOCIALACCOUNT_GOOGLE_SECRET |
From Google Cloud Console |
PORT |
8000 |
GUNICORN_WORKERS |
2 (increase for higher-traffic servers) |
- In the application's Domains tab, add your domain:
https://your-domain.com. - Enable Let's Encrypt for automatic TLS — Traefik handles HTTPS termination automatically.
Click Deploy in the Coolify dashboard. Coolify will:
- Pull the latest code from GitHub.
- Build the Docker image using the multi-stage
Dockerfile. - Run
entrypoint.shwhich runsmigrate,collectstatic, then starts Gunicorn. - Route HTTPS traffic through Traefik to port 8000.
Watch the Deployment Logs tab to confirm everything starts cleanly. A successful deploy ends with a line like:
[INFO] Booting worker with pid: ...
Update the webhook endpoint in your Stripe Dashboard to:
https://your-domain.com/checkout/wh/
In the application's Settings → Source tab, enable Auto-deploy on push to have Coolify rebuild and redeploy whenever you push to the main branch on GitHub.
The recommended way to run MasteryHub locally mirrors the production environment using Docker Compose.
Requirements: Docker Desktop (or Docker Engine + Compose plugin).
# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yosephdev/mastery-hub.git
cd mastery-hub
# 2. Copy the example env file and fill in your values
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env — at minimum set SECRET_KEY, Stripe keys, and AWS keys.
# DATABASE_URL is overridden by docker-compose.yml so you can leave it as-is.
# 3. Build and start all services (Django + PostgreSQL)
docker compose up --build
# 4. In a second terminal, create a superuser
docker compose exec web python manage.py createsuperuserThe app will be available at http://localhost:8000.
To stop: CTRL+C, then docker compose down.
# 1. Clone and enter the directory
git clone https://github.com/yosephdev/mastery-hub.git
cd mastery-hub
# 2. Create and activate a virtual environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
# 3. Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt
# 4. Create a .env file at the project root
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env — set at least SECRET_KEY=any-random-string and DEBUG=True.
# Leave DATABASE_URL unset to use the SQLite fallback automatically.
# 5. Apply migrations and create a superuser
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser
# 6. Run the development server
python manage.py runserverThe app will be available at http://127.0.0.1:8000.
Key environment variables for local dev (see .env.example for the full list):
| Variable | Local value |
|---|---|
SECRET_KEY |
Any random string |
DEBUG |
True |
DATABASE_URL |
Leave unset → SQLite; or set to a local Postgres URL |
USE_AWS |
False (media served locally from /media/) |
STRIPE_PUBLIC_KEY / STRIPE_SECRET_KEY |
Use Stripe test-mode keys |
If you'd like to backup your database models, use the following command for each model you'd like to create a fixture for:
python3 manage.py dumpdata your-model > your-model.json- repeat this action for each model you wish to backup
You can clone the repository by following these steps:
- Go to the GitHub repository
- Locate the Code button above the list of files and click it
- Select if you prefer to clone using HTTPS, SSH, or GitHub CLI and click the copy button to copy the URL to your clipboard
- Open Git Bash or Terminal
- Change the current working directory to the one where you want the cloned directory
- In your IDE Terminal, type the following command to clone my repository:
git clone https://github.com/yosephdev/mastery-hub.git
- Press Enter to create your local clone.
Alternatively, if using Gitpod, you can click below to create your own workspace using this repository.
Please note that in order to directly open the project in Gitpod, you need to have the browser extension installed. A tutorial on how to do that can be found here.
By forking the GitHub Repository, we make a copy of the original repository on our GitHub account to view and/or make changes without affecting the original owner's repository. You can fork this repository by using the following steps:
- Log in to GitHub and locate the GitHub Repository
- At the top of the Repository (not top of page) just above the "Settings" Button on the menu, locate the "Fork" Button.
- Once clicked, you should now have a copy of the original repository in your own GitHub account!
I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to my mentor, Mitko Bachvarov, for his exceptional guidance and unwavering support throughout my learning journey.
I am also deeply appreciative of the entire Code Institute team for their outstanding management of the educational process and the high-quality resources they provided.
Furthermore, I am grateful to my classmates for their camaraderie and encouragement. Your shared knowledge and enthusiasm significantly enriched our learning experience and made the process both enjoyable and rewarding.
- Removed hardcoded credentials —
create_default_sessions()no longer creates a user with a plaintext password; it now logs a warning if no profile exists and skips seeding safely. - Replaced
print()withlogging— all debug output in views now goes through Python'sloggingmodule so it can be filtered/silenced in production. - Consolidated duplicate contact views —
contactandcontact_viewwere merged into a single view with propermessages.success/errorfeedback andPOST → Redirect → GETpattern. - **Fixed s