Discover Bulgaria

Where the road becomes a story.

Там, където пътят се превръща в история.

Discover Bulgaria is a bilingual travel discovery platform for exploring remarkable, authentic and lesser-known places across Bulgaria.

Visitors can discover destinations, search and browse categories. Registered users can save favorites and contribute new places. Administrators review and moderate community submissions before publication.

Table of Contents

• Live Demo
• Project Context
• About the Project
• Key Features
• Screenshots
• User Roles
• Tech Stack
• Architecture
• Database Model
• Submission and Moderation Flow
• Security
• Environment Variables
• Local Development
• Deployment
• Project Structure
• Production QA
• Roadmap
• Project Status
• Author
• License

Live Demo

Production: https://discoverbulgaria.net

Project Context

Discover Bulgaria was created as a SoftUni AI Apps course project. It demonstrates AI-assisted application development with Lovable, React and TypeScript, TanStack Start, Supabase, GitHub and Netlify.

The project started as a frontend prototype and grew step by step into a deployed full-stack travel platform with:

• authentication
• a PostgreSQL database with row-level security
• file storage for destination photos
• a submission and moderation workflow
• bilingual content in English and Bulgarian
• continuous production deployment

Screenshots

Home

Bulgarian	English

Discover

Categories	Destinations

Destination Experience

Place Details	Map and Directions

User Experience

Sign In	Favorites

Contribution Workflow

Add a Place	My Places

Cinematic Experience

Mobile

About the Project

Discover Bulgaria is designed as a community-driven travel discovery platform focused on:

• interesting places across Bulgaria
• natural attractions
• historic and cultural locations
• hidden destinations
• local travel inspiration
• community contributions

The application supports both English and Bulgarian.

Key Features

• English / Bulgarian localization
• responsive desktop, tablet and mobile interface
• destination search
• category filtering
• dynamic destination pages
• destination photo galleries and uploads
• interactive maps using Leaflet and OpenStreetMap
• Google Maps directions links
• user authentication
• registration and login
• user profile
• Add a Place workflow
• My Places
• Favorites
• photo upload
• moderation workflow
• Admin Dashboard
• Admin Manage Places
• approve / reject functionality
• place statuses:
  • For Review
  • Published
  • Rejected
• Supabase Row Level Security
• SSR with TanStack Start
• automatic Netlify deployment from GitHub

User Roles

Visitor

Visitors can:

• browse published destinations
• search
• filter by category
• view destination details
• use maps and directions
• switch between English and Bulgarian

Registered User

Registered users can additionally:

• save favorites
• add new places
• manage their own submitted places
• edit permitted submissions
• upload destination photos
• manage their profile

Administrator

Administrators can additionally:

• access the Admin Dashboard
• review submitted places
• approve or reject submissions
• edit and manage all places
• moderate content

Tech Stack

Frontend

• React
• TypeScript
• TanStack Start
• Vite
• Tailwind CSS v4 with shadcn/ui (Radix UI primitives) and Lucide icons

Backend and Database

• Supabase
• PostgreSQL
• Supabase Auth
• Supabase Storage
• Row Level Security

Maps

• Leaflet
• OpenStreetMap
• Google Maps external directions

Development and Deployment

• Lovable
• GitHub
• Netlify
• Bun

Architecture

flowchart TD
    A[Lovable] --> B[GitHub]
    B --> C[Netlify]
    C --> D[discoverbulgaria.net]
    D --> E[TanStack Start / React]
    E --> F[Supabase Auth]
    E --> G[PostgreSQL]
    E --> H[Supabase Storage]

Loading

Changes are made in Lovable, pushed to GitHub and deployed automatically by Netlify. Server-side rendering is preserved on Netlify, so the application is not deployed as a static SPA. Supabase provides authentication, the PostgreSQL database, storage for destination photos and row-level security policies.

Database Model

erDiagram
    AUTH_USERS ||--o{ PLACES : submits
    AUTH_USERS ||--o{ FAVORITES : saves
    AUTH_USERS ||--o{ PLACE_PHOTOS : uploads
    PLACES ||--o{ FAVORITES : saved_in
    PLACES ||--o{ PLACE_PHOTOS : has

    AUTH_USERS {
        uuid id
        text email
        jsonb app_metadata
        jsonb user_metadata
    }
    PLACES {
        uuid id
        text title
        text slug
        text category
        text region
        uuid owner_id
        text status
        timestamptz created_at
    }
    PLACE_PHOTOS {
        uuid id
        uuid place_id
        uuid uploaded_by
        text storage_path
        boolean is_cover
        int sort_order
    }
    FAVORITES {
        uuid id
        uuid user_id
        uuid place_id
        timestamptz created_at
    }

Loading

Notes:

• Authentication users live in the Supabase auth.users table. There is no separate profiles table, and the display name is stored in user metadata.
• Admin status is stored in Supabase auth app metadata, not in an application table.
• Places carry a moderation status: for_review, published or rejected.
• Photos reference a place and point to an object in Supabase Storage, with one cover photo per place.
• Favorites connect a user and a place.
• Bulgarian translations are stored as optional companion columns on places, for example title_bg and short_description_bg, with English used as a fallback.

Submission and Moderation Flow

flowchart TD
    V[Visitor] --> R[Register / Login]
    R --> A[Add a Place]
    A --> F[Status: For Review]
    F --> M[Admin Review]
    M -->|Approve| P[Status: Published]
    M -->|Reject| X[Status: Rejected]
    P --> W[Publicly visible on the site]
    X --> E[Owner can edit and resubmit]
    E --> F

Loading

Security

Access rules are enforced by Supabase Row Level Security, with server-side privileged operations only where moderation requires them.

Capability	Visitor	Registered User	Administrator
Read published places	Yes	Yes	Yes
Read unpublished places	No	Own only	Yes
Create a place submission	No	Yes	Yes
Edit or delete a place	No	Own only	Any place
Upload photos	No	Own places	Any place
Manage favorites	No	Own only	Own only
Approve or reject submissions	No	No	Yes

Visitor

Can read published places. Cannot see unpublished content, modify places or use favorites.

Registered User

Can manage their own submissions, create favorites and upload photos for places they own. Edits by a normal user return the place to the For Review status. Cannot manage other users' content or approve places.

Administrator

Can read, edit and manage all places, approve or reject submissions and moderate content. Administrator status is verified on the server, not in the browser.

Credentials and secrets

• The Supabase service role key is used only in server-only code and never reaches the browser bundle.
• All secrets are stored as environment variables. Netlify holds the production values.
• The local .env file is not committed to Git.
• .env.example contains variable names only, with no values.

Environment Variables

Public, exposed to the browser:

• VITE_SUPABASE_URL
• VITE_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY
• VITE_SUPABASE_PROJECT_ID

Server only:

• SUPABASE_URL
• SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY
• SUPABASE_PROJECT_ID
• SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY

Local Development

Requires Bun.

bun install
cp .env.example .env   # then fill in your own values
bun run dev            # start the development server

Available scripts:

bun run dev        # development server
bun run build      # production build
bun run build:dev  # development-mode build
bun run preview    # preview the production build
bun run lint       # ESLint
bun run format     # Prettier

Deployment

Lovable → GitHub → Netlify → discoverbulgaria.net

Changes are made in Lovable, pushed to GitHub and deployed automatically by Netlify. The main branch is the production branch. Server-side rendering is preserved on Netlify, so the application is not deployed as a static SPA.

Project Structure

.
├── public/                 static assets, media and README screenshots
├── src/
│   ├── assets/             images bundled by Vite
│   ├── components/         UI, home, places, admin and auth components
│   ├── data/               static editorial data such as categories
│   ├── hooks/              shared React hooks
│   ├── integrations/       Supabase clients, types and auth middleware
│   ├── lib/                server functions, queries, i18n and helpers
│   ├── routes/             file-based routes, including api and _authenticated
│   ├── router.tsx          router setup
│   ├── server.ts           SSR entry
│   └── styles.css          design system and Tailwind theme
├── supabase/               config and SQL migrations
├── .env.example            variable names only, no values
├── netlify.toml            Netlify build and SSR configuration
├── vite.config.ts          Vite and TanStack Start configuration
├── package.json
└── README.md

Production QA

The following areas are verified against the production site after significant changes:

• home page, hero search and category navigation
• destination search in English and Bulgarian, including Cyrillic queries
• destination detail pages loaded directly by URL
• map section, Get Directions, Open in Google Maps and Copy Coordinates
• language switching across the whole interface
• registration, login, profile and sign out
• favorites, Add a Place, My Places and submission statuses
• admin review, approve and reject
• responsive layout on mobile, tablet and desktop
• production build and TypeScript checks before every deployment

Roadmap

Possible future improvements:

• richer filtering, for example by region, season or difficulty
• user-facing map of all published destinations
• multi-photo galleries with reordering in the submission form
• saved trip lists and itineraries
• comments or ratings on destinations
• expanded Bulgarian editorial content
• improved analytics and structured data for search engines

Project Status

Discover Bulgaria is an active production project and continues to receive content, feature and maintenance updates.

Author

Created by AniDigit.

License

All rights reserved unless otherwise specified.

---

Created by AniDigit · © 2026 Discover Bulgaria