ABOUT THE PROJECT

This student project focused on developing a functional and secure course-based discussion forum for students. The platform allows users to register, log in, and participate in structured conversations across four predefined course categories. Logged-in users can publish posts, format content using a custom mini-WIKI syntax, upload images and comment on others' posts. Each comment triggers an automatic email notification to the original author, enhancing engagement and interactivity.

The forum includes a search feature and a built-in keyword analyzer that tracks the frequency of course-specific terms. A custom web crawler fetches external resources relevant to each course, helping users access additional learning materials without leaving the site. A lightweight visitor counter tracks forum traffic and all user sessions are securely managed using PHP and cookies with strict parameters.

The project was built with HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL, with a strong focus on backend functionality, data handling and session security. While visual design was kept minimal, the implementation of dynamic features, user flows and content management was central to the development process.