Overview
Small businesses often lack affordable, scalable e-commerce platforms. I built a full-stack solution that enables
product management, customer shopping, and secure checkout. An integrated admin dashboard supports order tracking,
stock management, and basic analytics. This was designed for modularity, allowing easy integration with
payment APIs or shipping services in the future.
Goals
- Provide an intuitive storefront for browsing and purchasing products.
- Implement a secure checkout flow with proper validation.
- Offer an admin dashboard for order management, stock tracking, and sales insights.
My Role
- Backend: Django models, REST endpoints, and database schema for products, carts, and orders.
- Frontend: HTML/CSS templates, dynamic cart updates with JavaScript.
- Database: PostgreSQL schema design with indexes for quick product and order queries.
Architecture
- Backend: Django + DRF providing REST APIs for products, carts, and orders. Flask services for micro integrations.
- Data: PostgreSQL with tables for
products, orders, order_items, and users.
- Frontend: HTML/CSS for the storefront, JavaScript for cart interactivity and AJAX requests.
- Security: Form validation, CSRF protection, hashed passwords, and prepared queries for safety.
- Deployment: Docker + Render/Heroku, environment variables for secrets, persistent volumes for database.
Highlights
Responsive Storefront
Clean and mobile-first design so customers can browse and checkout easily on any device.
Admin Dashboard
Central hub for managing products, stock, and incoming orders with real-time updates.
Secure Checkout
Validations for payments, shipping info, and order confirmation with audit logs for transactions.
What I Learned
- How to structure a scalable Django app with separate admin and user workflows.
- Integrating PostgreSQL indexing for fast queries on large product catalogs.
- Best practices in checkout flows, including validation and error handling.
Next Steps
- Integrate Stripe or PayPal for real payment handling.
- Extend admin analytics with sales reports and customer insights.
- Add React for a modern SPA-style frontend experience.
