StudyNotion — EdTech Platform

A course-selling platform with instructor and student roles. Instructors upload video lessons and structure them into sections; students purchase courses, track progress, and receive real-time updates when new content lands.

Most course platforms bundle too many features and hide the primitives an engineer would want to see: media upload, progress tracking, and live notifications. StudyNotion was built to keep those primitives visible.

• 01Backend: Node/Express REST API with MongoDB, Cloudinary integration for video and image uploads, and a WebSocket channel for real-time notifications.
• 02Frontend: React SPA with Redux Toolkit for cart / auth state and React Query for server data.
• 03Media: signed uploads directly to Cloudinary from the client to avoid streaming through the API.

• React
• Node.js
• MongoDB
• WebSockets
• Cloudinary

• Instructor course builder with sections and sub-sections
• Student dashboard with per-lesson progress tracking
• Direct-to-cloud media uploads with signed URLs
• Real-time notifications when new lessons are published

• Large video uploads had to bypass the API — solved with signed Cloudinary URLs generated server-side.
• Keeping cart, auth, and course-progress state consistent across tabs — solved with a small storage sync layer.

• End-to-end course lifecycle working from creation to consumption
• Zero API traffic for actual media bytes

• For media, get the bytes off your own servers as fast as possible.
• Redux for global UI state and React Query for server state is a good split; mixing them is where bugs live.