Pancake Overflow

A Q&A platform for developers who are particularly interested in cooking. Built with the MERN stack as part of Northeastern CS4530 Fundamentals of Software Engineering Fall 2025 course.

Designed and implemented by Minh Nguyen, Cecily Stevens, and Edward Ibarra.

Live Site

Pancake Overflow

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v14 or higher)
• MongoDB (v4.4 or higher)
• npm package manager

Installation

1. Clone and Install Dependencies

cd CS4530-Group-Project

# Install all dependencies for client, server, and shared folders
npm install

# Install FontAwesome icons for client
cd client
npm install @fortawesome/react-fontawesome @fortawesome/fontawesome-svg-core @fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons
cd ..

2. Database Setup

cd server

# Delete existing database (if any)
npm run delete-db

# Populate database with seed data
npm run populate-db

3. Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the server folder:

GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=<your-github-client-secret>
GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=<your-github-client-id>
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=<your-google-client-id>
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=<your-google-client-secret>
SERVER_URL=http://localhost:8000
MONGODB_URI=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017
CLIENT_URL=http://localhost:4530
PORT=8000

Create a .env file in the client folder:

VITE_SERVER_URL=http://localhost:8000

Note: You will need to create your own OAuth credentials for GitHub and Google to enable social login functionality.

4. Start the Application

Open two terminal windows:

Terminal 1 - Server:

cd server
npm run dev

Terminal 2 - Client:

cd client
npm run dev

The app will be available at http://localhost:4530