Crowdfunding Platform (Laravel 12) 💸🤝

A complete crowdfunding platform built with Laravel 12 (PHP 8.2), MariaDB, Vite, and Bootstrap. It features a public area for browsing and donating to campaigns, authenticated story/idea creation, and an administration area for approving or deleting submissions. Includes image optimization, accessibility improvements, search/sort, and a working contact page with SMTP email.

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🌐 Live Demo

Try the app here: Crowdfunding Platform

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Table of Contents

• About
• Key Features
• Changelog Highlights
• Architecture Overview
• Tech Stack
• Screenshots
• Prerequisites
• Running the App
• Roadmap / Ideas
• License
• Author

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About

This project implements an online platform for crowdfunding stories or ideas. It allows users to create campaigns with a funding goal and accept donations from the public:

• Public users can browse all approved stories/ideas (campaigns), see goal progress, and donate without registering.
• Registered users can create new stories/ideas with images and funding goals.
• Admins can approve or delete submitted campaigns; only approved ones appear publicly.

The platform is production-ready for shared hosting and configured to work with Namecheap + MariaDB via phpMyAdmin. It uses modern tooling (Vite, Bootstrap) and includes a working contact form with SMTP mail.

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Key Features

Public Area:

• Campaign listing with:
  • Story/idea text and cover image
  • Goal amount, raised amount, remaining amount
  • Donation history (name + amount)
  • Inline donation form (name + amount + Donate)
• Sorting and searching:
  • Sort campaigns; modal popup for searching by title
• Clear status presentation:
  • Campaigns that reached the goal are visually distinct and no longer accept donations
• Static pages:
  • About, Contact, FAQ, How It Works, Maintenance, Privacy, Terms

Auth & User Area:

• Registration and login (Laravel Breeze)
• New story/idea creation with image upload and target goal
• Server-side validation across all pages

Admin Area:

• Review all submitted campaigns
• Approve or delete campaigns (only approved are public)

Contact & Email:

• Contact page with form, validation, anti-bot checks
• SMTP-based mailing service for contact submissions

Performance & UX:

• Image optimization:
  • Convert uploads to WebP, resize, and serve responsive/lazy images
• Accessibility improvements:
  • ARIA labels, improved heading order, better link semantics
• Build pipeline with Vite

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Changelog Highlights

• feat(contact): add working contact page with mailing service
  • Controller, view, routes
  • SMTP integration, validation, anti-bot
• feat: create and edit campaign functionality in dashboard
• perf: optimize campaign images (WebP, resize, responsive/lazy)
• a11y: ARIA labels, improved heading order, link semantics
• feat: modal popup to search campaigns by title
• feat: sorting on campaigns page
• feat: add about, contact, faq, how-it-works, maintenance, privacy, terms pages
• feat: validation across all pages
• chore: deploy and connect to Namecheap MariaDB

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Architecture Overview

• Domain model:
  • Users: authentication and roles/permissions for admin access
  • Campaigns: story/idea, goal amount, raised amount, image, status (approved/pending)
  • Donations: donor name, amount, linked to campaign
• Project structure:
  • app/Http/Controllers — controllers (e.g., CampaignController, DonationController, ContactController)
  • app/Models — Eloquent models (User, Campaign, Donation)
  • resources/views — Blade templates (public pages, auth, admin)
  • routes/web.php — application routes
  • database/migrations — database schema
  • public/ — public assets (Vite builds, images)

Note: Image optimization uses Intervention Image (conversion to WebP and responsive dimensions). Donation flow updates totals and logs donor history.

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Tech Stack

Backend:

• Laravel 12 (PHP 8.2)
• MariaDB (MySQL-compatible)

Frontend:

• Vite
• Bootstrap 5
• Vanilla JS

Laravel Packages:

• laravel/breeze — auth scaffolding
• intervention/image-laravel — image processing (resize/WebP)
• laravel/telescope — development debugging tools (dev only)

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Screenshots

Lighthouse Test Results

Campaigns Page

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Prerequisites

• PHP 8.2+
• Composer 2.x
• Node.js 18+ and npm 9+
• MariaDB 10.5+ (or MySQL 8)
• OpenSSL/PDO extensions enabled
• Git (optional for cloning)
• For email: SMTP credentials

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Running the App

Backend (PHP):

php artisan serve

Frontend (Vite) – For development:

npm run dev

Or, for production build:

npm run build

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Roadmap / Ideas

• Comments or discussion section for each campaign
• Email verification for user registration
• Multi-language support
• Export campaign and donation data (CSV, PDF)
• Integration with payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, etc.)
• Two-factor authentication (2FA) for users/admins
• Social media sharing for campaigns
• Campaign expiration dates and automatic status updates
• Donation receipts via email
• Accessibility audit and improvements
• Mobile app or PWA version

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License

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

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Author

Laimonas – GitHub | Website