Hi folks! I'm a third-year computer science student who recently developed a full-stack project called *ThinkLikeMusab*. The concept is designed to allow users to share their thinking process while solving data structures and algorithms, rather than just showcasing the final solution. My stack includes React with Vite for the front end, and Node.js with Express, MongoDB for the back end, along with JWT for authentication. I deployed the frontend on Vercel and the backend on Render, but I found deployment much tougher than coding! I faced issues like CORS errors connecting the frontend and backend, problems with environment variables in production, MongoDB Atlas blocking connections, and JWT errors due to missing secrets. I managed to resolve them all, but the whole experience felt really like a trial-and-error situation. So I'm curious, how do you tackle deployment and environment setup in a more systematic way? Additionally, what suggestions do you have for features that might enhance the platform for learners? Check out my project here: [https://think-like-musab.vercel.app](https://think-like-musab.vercel.app) - I'd love to hear your feedback!
2 Answers
Have you thought about dockerizing both your dev and production environments? Setting up GitHub CI for automated testing and deployment has worked really well for us! Here's my project as a reference: [https://github.com/coneshare/coneshare](https://github.com/coneshare/coneshare).
It sounds like you ran into some common issues! The Vercel and Render combo can lead to CORS headaches and delays. You might want to consider consolidating everything onto a single server to avoid CORS issues altogether. Just curious, what backend framework did you use for the project?
Is this mainly a blog site you're working on?