PhotoPlat

A photographer booking marketplace for Nepal — browse portfolios by style and city, compare pricing, and send booking requests directly to photographers.

Live site: https://photoplat.onrender.com/

Features

For clients

• Browse photographers by specialty (Wedding, Portrait, Family, Fashion, Travel), city, and name
• View a photographer's portfolio, completed projects, rating, and current offers
• Save favorite photographers to a personal list
• Send a booking request with shoot date, package, and phone number — only available for identity-verified photographers
• Get emailed automatically when a photographer accepts or declines a request

For photographers

• Public profile with portfolio images, project history, pricing, and bio
• KYC identity verification (citizenship number + document photos), reviewed by an admin
• A "Verified" badge unlocks once KYC is approved — required before clients can book or see the photographer's offers
• Publish and cancel time-limited promotional offers
• Add and remove completed projects
• Accept or reject incoming booking requests, which notifies the client by email

Admin

• Full Django admin for managing photographers, bookings, offers, and portfolio content
• Dedicated KYC review workflow: bulk verify/reject actions, document photo previews, and a restricted "KYC Reviewer" role that can only update verification status — nothing else
• create_kyc_reviewer management command to provision a review-only staff account

Tech stack

• Backend: Django 6
• Database: PostgreSQL (production) / SQLite (local dev)
• Media storage: Cloudinary (production) / local disk (local dev)
• Email: Brevo HTTPS API (production — Render's free tier blocks SMTP ports) for signup OTP codes and booking notifications; SMTP or console backend for local dev
• Static files: WhiteNoise
• Styling: Tailwind CSS (CDN) with a custom editorial theme
• Hosting: Render (web service + managed Postgres)

Local setup

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/.

Optional local environment variables

Everything works locally with sane defaults (SQLite, local media storage, console email backend). To exercise the production integrations locally, set:

Variable	Purpose
CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME, CLOUDINARY_API_KEY, CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET	Persistent media storage
BREVO_API_KEY	Real email delivery via Brevo's HTTPS API (needed on Render, whose free tier blocks SMTP ports)
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL	Sender address — must be a sender verified in your Brevo account
EMAIL_HOST, EMAIL_HOST_USER, EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD	Classic SMTP delivery (only works on hosts that allow outbound SMTP)
DATABASE_URL	Point at a Postgres instance instead of SQLite

Deployment

Deployed on Render via render.yaml (Infrastructure as Code) — a free web service plus a free managed Postgres database, wired together automatically. Pushing to main triggers an automatic redeploy.

Project structure

• main/ — public-facing marketplace: home, photographer listings/profiles, offers, bookings, static assets
• accounts/ — photographer auth, dashboard, KYC, and profile management
• project/ — Django settings, URL routing, WSGI entrypoint