🔗 LinkUp

Full Stack Professional Network Platform

A modern, feature-rich professional networking platform built with Django, WebSockets, and Tailwind CSS.

Connecting professionals, one post at a time.

Features · Installation · Tech Stack · Changelog · Roadmap · Contributing

🌟 Overview

LinkUp is a comprehensive professional networking platform designed to connect professionals, facilitate job opportunities, and enable meaningful interactions. Built independently using Python/Django and modern web technologies, it delivers a seamless experience for users to build their professional network — complete with real-time messaging, live notifications, job listings, and rich content creation.

Built using vibe coding — the entire full-stack platform developed independently in Python, Django, Tailwind CSS, JavaScript, and Django Channels.

Founded by: Techhackontime999 · amitkumarkh010102006@gmail.com

✨ Features

👤 User Management

Secure registration and login system
Comprehensive user profiles with avatars
Work experience and educational background
Skills and endorsements showcase

📝 Feed & Posts

Rich text posts via CKEditor integration
Image uploads and sharing
Like, comment, edit, and delete posts
Real-time feed updates

🤝 Networking

Follow/unfollow system
Connection requests
User discovery and suggestions
Public profile pages

💼 Jobs

Browse and search job listings with type, workplace & location filters
Post job openings (recruiters/companies)
Apply to jobs directly through the platform
Track and manage applications
Saved jobs and custom job alerts (instant/daily/weekly)

💬 Real-time Messaging

Instant WebSocket-powered chat
Typing indicators and read receipts
Online/offline user status
Offline message queuing
Full conversation history

🔔 Notifications

Real-time push notifications via WebSocket
Types: likes, comments, follows, messages, job updates
Customizable notification preferences
Notification grouping and badge counts

🔍 Search

Unified search across users, posts, and jobs
Advanced filters and result highlighting
Real-time suggestions
Improved form rendering (v1.2.0)

🎨 UI/UX

Fully responsive, mobile-first design
Modern glassmorphism-inspired interface (Tailwind CSS)
Interactive 3D neural-aurora background (Three.js)
Smooth animations, page loader, and skeleton loading states
Dark/light theme with system preference detection
WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliant

🔒 Security

CSRF protection on all forms
XSS prevention with HTML sanitization (Bleach)
Rate limiting per user/IP
Secure session management
File upload validation
HSTS, X-Frame-Options, Content-Security-Policy headers

🛠 Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Django 5.2.10, Python 3.10+
Database	SQLite (dev) / PostgreSQL (production)
Real-time	Django Channels, Redis, WebSockets
ASGI Server	Daphne
Frontend	Tailwind CSS 4.2, Vanilla JS (ES6+)
Rich Text	CKEditor 6.7.3
Icons	Heroicons (SVG)
Image Processing	Pillow
HTML Sanitization	Bleach
File Detection	Python-Magic

📦 Installation

Prerequisites

Python 3.10+
Redis Server
Git

Steps

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Techhackontime999/LinkUp.git
cd LinkUp

# 2. Create and activate virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate        # Linux/Mac
# venv\Scripts\activate         # Windows

# 3. Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 4. Start Redis (required for real-time features)
sudo systemctl start redis      # Linux
# brew services start redis     # macOS

# 5. Run database migrations
python3 manage.py makemigrations
python3 manage.py migrate

# 6. Create an admin account
python3 manage.py createsuperuser

# 7. Collect static files
python3 manage.py collectstatic --noinput

# 8. Install and build Tailwind CSS
python3 manage.py tailwind install
python3 manage.py tailwind build

# 9. Start the development server
python3 manage.py runserver

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000 in your browser.

⚙️ Configuration

Create a .env file in the project root:

SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key-here
DEBUG=True
ALLOWED_HOSTS=localhost,127.0.0.1

# Database (PostgreSQL for production)
DB_ENGINE=django.db.backends.postgresql
DB_NAME=linkup_db
DB_USER=your_db_user
DB_PASSWORD=your_db_password
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=5432

# Redis
REDIS_HOST=localhost
REDIS_PORT=6379

# Email
EMAIL_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
EMAIL_PORT=587
EMAIL_USE_TLS=True
EMAIL_HOST_USER=your-email@gmail.com
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=your-app-password

Required environment variables for production

SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key
DEBUG=False
DJANGO_ENVIRONMENT=production
ALLOWED_HOSTS=yourdomain.com,www.yourdomain.com
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/dbname
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379/0
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS=https://yourdomain.com

📁 Project Structure

LinkUp/
├── core/                     # Security middleware, validators, search views
├── users/                    # Auth, profiles, experience, education
├── feed/                     # Posts, comments, likes
├── network/                  # Follow/connection system
├── jobs/                     # Job listings and applications
├── messaging/                # WebSocket consumers, real-time chat, notifications
├── theme/                    # Tailwind CSS source
├── professional_network/     # Django settings, URLs, ASGI/WSGI config
├── templates/                # Base templates
├── static/                   # CSS, JS, CKEditor assets
├── media/                    # User uploads (avatars, post images)
├── manage.py
├── requirements.txt
└── README.md

🌐 Deployment

Quick start (production)

# HTTP server
gunicorn professional_network.wsgi:application --config gunicorn.conf.py

# WebSocket server
daphne -b 0.0.0.0 -p 8001 professional_network.asgi:application

Health check endpoints

Endpoint	Purpose
`/health/`	Basic health check
`/health/db/`	Database connectivity
`/health/redis/`	Redis connectivity
`/readiness/`	Full readiness check

Deployment options

Heroku — one-click deployment with add-ons
DigitalOcean — App Platform or Droplet
AWS — Elastic Beanstalk or EC2
Docker — docker-compose.yml included

Production checklist

Set DEBUG=False and a strong SECRET_KEY
Switch to PostgreSQL
Configure Redis in production
Run collectstatic
Set up Nginx reverse proxy + SSL (Let's Encrypt)
Enable HSTS and all security headers

📚 API Reference

Posts

Method	Endpoint	Description
`POST`	`/like/<post_id>/`	Like / unlike a post
`POST`	`/post/<post_id>/comment/`	Add a comment
`GET`	`/post/<post_id>/comments/`	Fetch all comments
`GET`	`/post/<post_id>/edit/`	Get post data for editing
`POST`	`/post/<post_id>/update/`	Save post edits
`POST`	`/post/<post_id>/delete/`	Delete a post

Network

Method	Endpoint	Description
`POST`	`/follow/<user_id>/`	Follow / unfollow a user

WebSocket

// Real-time chat
const chatSocket = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:8000/ws/chat/<username>/');

// Notifications
const notifSocket = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:8000/ws/notifications/');

🧪 Testing

# Run all tests
python3 manage.py test

# Run by app
python3 manage.py test users
python3 manage.py test feed
python3 manage.py test messaging

# With coverage
pip install coverage
coverage run --source='.' manage.py test
coverage report
coverage html

📋 Changelog

v2.0.0 — June 21, 2026 (Latest)

Cross-platform UI/UX Revolution:

Complete visual redesign — glassmorphism-inspired UI with CSS custom properties
Interactive 3D neural-aurora background powered by Three.js
Elegant page loader with animated spinner, gradient text, and smooth content reveal
Dark/light theme with automatic system preference detection and manual toggle
Scroll-reveal animations, stagger containers, magnetic buttons, and parallax tilt cards
Responsive mobile navigation and refined component system

Enhanced Job Management:

Job type & workplace type filter dropdowns with instant auto-submit
Fully functional Job Alerts — create, list, activate/deactivate, and delete alerts
JobAlert model with keyword, location, type, workplace, and frequency (instant/daily/weekly) settings
Job alert management interface in Django admin

Django 5.2 Compatibility & Stability:

Upgraded to Django 5.2.10 with cross-platform fixes
Fixed WhiteNoise middleware duplication in settings
All migrations consolidated and production-ready

v1.2.0 — February 8, 2026

v1.1.0 — February 6, 2026

Real-time messaging fix:

Resolved critical WebSocket event handling issues preventing real-time message display in chat. Messages were only appearing after a page refresh.

Root cause: Django Channels WebSocket consumers were missing handlers for several event types — multi_tab_sync, notification_message, user_status, read_receipt_update, and badge_update — causing ValueError: No handler for message type X and connection drops.

Fix: Added all missing event handlers to both ChatConsumer and NotificationsConsumer in linkup/messaging/consumers.py (+60 lines).

Impact:

Messages now appear instantly for both sender and receiver
No more WebSocket connection drops
Cross-tab synchronization, read receipts, and badge updates all functioning correctly

v1.0.0 — February 4, 2026 (Initial Release)

First official release of LinkUp.

Core platform delivered:

User authentication, profiles, experience, and education
Rich text post creation with image sharing (CKEditor)
Like, comment, edit, delete on posts
Follow/connection system and user discovery
Job listings and application tracking
Real-time WebSocket messaging with typing indicators and read receipts
Live notification system
Unified search across users, posts, and jobs
Django admin panel with content moderation
Full security hardening (CSRF, XSS, rate limiting, HSTS)
Production-ready deployment (PostgreSQL, Redis, Daphne, Docker, Nginx)

🗺️ Roadmap

| Version | Status | Features | |---|---|---|---| | v1.0.0 | ✅ Released | Auth, posts, messaging, jobs, notifications, search | | v1.1.0 | ✅ Released | Real-time messaging WebSocket fix | | v1.2.0 | ✅ Released | Job management, enhanced search, admin tools | | v2.0.0 | ✅ Released | UI/UX redesign, 3D background, theme switcher, job alerts & filters, Django 5.2 | | v2.1.0 | 🔵 Planned | Video posts, Stories, advanced analytics | | v3.0.0 | 🔵 Planned | Groups, events, premium subscriptions, company pages, learning platform |

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome!

Fork the repository
Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature/your-feature
Commit using conventional format: feat: add user profile editing
Push and open a Pull Request

Commit types: feat · fix · docs · style · refactor · test · chore

Areas to contribute: bug fixes, new features, documentation, UI/UX, performance, security, tests, translations.

🐛 Troubleshooting

Redis connection error

redis-cli ping   # Should return PONG
sudo systemctl start redis

Static files not loading

python3 manage.py collectstatic --noinput

WebSocket not connecting — verify Redis is running and CHANNEL_LAYERS is configured in settings.py.

Rate limit exceeded (429)

python3 clear_rate_limit.py

📄 License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

📞 Contact & Support

Bug reports: GitHub Issues
Discussions: GitHub Discussions
Email: amitkumarkh010102006@gmail.com

Made with ❤️ by Techhackontime999

⭐ Star this repo if you find it useful!

⬆ Back to top

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
.kiro/specs		.kiro/specs
.vscode		.vscode
linkup		linkup
taste-skill		taste-skill
README.md		README.md
TEST_DATA_README.md		TEST_DATA_README.md
debug_form.py		debug_form.py
insert_handler.ps1		insert_handler.ps1
insert_handler.py		insert_handler.py
insert_user_status.ps1		insert_user_status.ps1

Latest commit

History

Folders and files

Repository files navigation