🚀 MERN Blog App: The Full-Stack Content Hub with Search Engine Optimization

Backend	Frontend	Database	Images	License

A powerful, production-ready Blog CMS built with the MERN stack. This application demonstrates best practices for secure authentication, scalable media handling, and a fully responsive user experience.Perfect for learning MERN or using as a production-level blogging platform

• 🌐 Check out the Live Demo: https://blogwebapp.koyeb.app/

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✨ Core Features & Highlights

Security & User Experience

• 🔒 Secure Auth: Implements JSON Web Tokens (JWT) and Bcrypt for robust and protected user registration and login.

• ✏️ Rich Text Editing: Integrated editor allows for expressive, formatted content creation.

• 🖼️ Scalable Media: Uses Cloudinary to offload and efficiently serve all uploaded post images.

• 📱 Fully Responsive: Crafted with Tailwind CSS and Material-UI (MUI) for a clean, mobile-first design.

• 🌍 SEO-friendly blogging structure: search engine optimization features

  ⚡ React Helmet: dynamic page titles, meta descriptions, keywords, OG previews, Twitter Cards, etc.

  🤖 robots.txt: properly configured to manage crawler access, indexing rules, and bot behavior.

  🗺️ Auto-Generated sitemap.xml: – dynamically generated from backend routes/posts, ensuring faster indexing by Google, Bing, and other search engines.

• 🏷️ Intelligent Filtering: Quickly search posts

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⚙️ Tech Stack Deep Dive

This project leverages a modern, decoupled architecture across the MERN stack.

Frontend (Client) - React ⚛️

Tool	Purpose
React	Core library for dynamic UI development.
Tailwind CSS	Utility-first CSS framework for rapid, responsive styling.
Material-UI (MUI)	High-quality, pre-built components for complex UI elements.
Axios	Promise-based HTTP client for API interaction.
React Helmet	Search engine optimization.

Backend (Server) - Node.js & Express ⚙️

Tool	Purpose
Express.js	Minimalist framework for building the RESTful API endpoints.
Mongoose	MongoDB Object Data Modeling (ODM) for robust data schemas.
Cloudinary SDK	API integration for remote image uploading and storage.
JWT & Bcrypt	Security layer for token-based authorization and password hashing.

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🛠️ Getting Started (Run Locally)

1. Clone & Install

Clone the repo and install dependencies for both the server and client:

git clone [https://github.com/dheepaky/Mern-Blog-App.git](https://github.com/dheepaky/Mern-Blog-App.git)
cd Mern-Blog-App

# Install server dependencies
npm install --prefix server

# Install client dependencies
npm install --prefix client


MONGO_URI=YOUR_MONGODB_CONNECTION_STRING
JWT_SECRET=SUPER_SECRET_KEY

# Cloudinary credentials
CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=YOUR_CLOUD_NAME
CLOUDINARY_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY
CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET=YOUR_API_SECRET

PORT=5000

Running the Application

1. Start the Backend Server: Navigate back to the server directory and run the development script:

   npm run dev  # Requires nodemon
   # OR
   npm start 

   The server will typically run on http://localhost:5000.

2. Start the Frontend Client: Navigate to the client directory and run:

   npm start

   The React application will open in your browser, typically at http://localhost:3000.

You're all set! Now you can test the upload functionality and see your assets appear instantly on Cloudinary.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are what make the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'feat: Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

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📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more information.

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👤 Author

Dheepak Y

• GitHub: dheepaky
• Project Link: https://github.com/dheepaky/mern-blog-app