Digital Leap Africa E-Learning Platform

Digital Leap Africa is a full-stack e-learning and community platform built with the Laravel framework. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools for managing and delivering educational content, tracking user progress, and fostering a community around learning. The entire platform, from the public-facing website to the advanced admin panel, is designed to be fully dynamic and database-driven.

Features

• Public-Facing Website: A fully responsive, dark-themed website showcasing courses, projects, eLibrary resources, and a job board.
• Complete Authentication: Secure user registration, login, profile management, and password reset functionality.
• Role-Based Access Control: A secure distinction between regular users and privileged admins.
• Advanced E-Learning System:
  • Course enrollment for authenticated users.
  • Multi-level course structure: Courses -> Topics -> Lessons.
  • Support for various lesson types (notes, videos, assignments).
• Gamification & Progress Tracking:
  • Users earn points for activities like enrolling in courses.
  • Users can mark lessons as complete.
  • The system automatically calculates and displays a course completion percentage.
  • Total points are displayed on the user's profile.
• Comprehensive Admin Panel (CMS):
  • Full CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) management for Jobs, Courses, Projects, and eLibrary Resources.
  • Advanced interface for managing nested course content (Topics and Lessons).
  • A global Site Settings page to dynamically control the site name, logo, and footer links.

Tech Stack

• Backend: PHP 8.1 / Laravel 10
• Frontend: Blade / Tailwind CSS / Alpine.js
• Database: MySQL

Getting Started

Follow these instructions to get a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

You will need a local development environment with the following installed:

• PHP >= 8.1
• Composer
• Node.js & npm
• A local database server (e.g., MySQL via XAMPP, WAMP, or Laragon)

Installation Procedure

Follow these steps to set up the project locally.

1. Clone the Repository Open your terminal and clone the project from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/osumba404/digital-leap-africa.git

Navigate into the project directory:

cd digital-leap-africa

2. Install Dependencies Install all the required PHP and JavaScript packages:

# Install PHP dependencies
composer install

# Install JavaScript dependencies
npm install

3. Configure the Environment Create your local environment file and generate a unique application key:

# Create the .env file
cp .env.example .env

# Generate the app key
php artisan key:generate

4. Set Up the Database

• Create a new, empty database using your preferred database tool (e.g., phpMyAdmin).
• Open the .env file you just created and update the DB_ variables with your local database credentials: dotenv DB_CONNECTION=mysql DB_HOST=127.0.0.1 DB_PORT=3306 DB_DATABASE=your_database_name DB_USERNAME=your_database_username DB_PASSWORD=your_database_password

5. Run Migrations and Seed the Database This command will create all the necessary tables and populate them with the default content (sample courses, admin settings, etc.).

php artisan migrate:fresh --seed

6. Create the Storage Link This makes your publicly stored files (like uploaded logos) accessible from the web.

php artisan storage:link

7. Compile Frontend Assets Compile the CSS and JavaScript files for development:

npm run dev

Keep this process running in a separate terminal window to automatically recompile assets as you make changes.

8. Serve the Application In another terminal window, start the Laravel development server:

php artisan serve

The application will now be running at http://127.0.0.1:8000.

Admin Access

To access the Admin Panel, you need to grant a user the admin role.

1. Register a new user on the website.
2. Open your database tool, navigate to the users table, and find the user you just created.
3. Change the value in the role column from user to admin.
4. Log in with that user, and you will see the "Admin Panel" link in the navigation.