Case 02 of 03

WANDERLUST

Find a stay, leave a review, book the trip.

live on Render — go book something

LIVE ON RENDERRender · 2025

Where to?Search

Sea-view hutCoastal · 2 guests★★★★★Book

Pine cabinHills · 4 guests★★★★★Book

Old-town loftCity · 2 guests★★★★★Book

Role

Full-stack developer

When

2025

Built with

Node · Express · MongoDB · Passport.js · Cloudinary · Bootstrap

Result

Live on Render

The problem

“A booking site has to earn trust: real accounts, real photos, honest reviews — and listings you can actually find.”

the bar was production, not a demo

How it worksBuilt like aproper backend.1BrowserEJS + Bootstrap2ExpressMVC routes3MiddlewareValidation + errors4Passport.jsSessions + roles5MongoDBListings · reviews · users6CloudinaryCompressed mediadeployed on Render with environment-based config

The hard parts

Trust & roles

Secure multi-user accounts with role-based access control.

Fast search

Search and filtering that stays quick across hundreds of listings.

Safe CRUD

Validation and error handling on every create, update and delete.

What came out of it

~20%

faster database queries after reworking the APIs

500+

listings searchable and filterable

Live

in production on Render, responsive and accessible

Life of a listing

Wanderlust · stay ticket01

Listed

Host + Cloudinary

A host posts a stay; photos are compressed and stored.

PUBLISHED

Wanderlust · stay ticket02

Reviewed

Guests

Signed-in guests rate and review — validated server-side.

RATED

Wanderlust · stay ticket03

Booked

Passport.js

An authenticated user books; the session guards every step.

BOOKED ✓

every stay gets its own ticket

Visit the live site View the code

Next upRESUME BUILDERA schema-driven resume builder with live preview — React, jsPDF.

Back to work