I built and deployed a social/media platform from scratch

I recently built and deployed Studio50, a full-stack social and media platform.

I started it as a side project while working another job, but eventually committed to it full-time. What began as an idea grew into a working platform with authentication, user profiles, content publishing, image/audio/video uploads, search and discovery, likes, comments, views, real-time chat, and WebRTC voice/video communication.

I designed and coded the application from the ground up using MongoDB, Express, Node.js and EJS.

Some of the parts I found particularly interesting to build:

Real-Time & WebRTC: Built a live multimedia lounge using Socket.IO and WebRTC, including real-time text chat, active-user presence tracking, and voice/video call functionality.

Media Pipeline & Cost Control: Integrated Cloudinary with upload limits for images, audio and video, along with isolated user folder structures for organized media management and protection against excessive uploads.

Dynamic Content & UX: Built 11 dynamic EJS views with real-time view counters, interactive likes, threaded comments, and search functionality across posts by author and title.

Authentication & Account Management: Implemented authentication, session handling, profile management, password-reset functionality, and explicit workflows for permanent account deletion.

I handled the architecture, development, integration, testing, and deployment myself.

This isn't a prototype or a collection of static screens — it's a functioning application that I actually deployed and continue to develop.

One thing I found particularly interesting was seeing how much the product changed as I moved from simply building features to actually thinking about the experience of a real user.

Studio50 is live here:
https://studio50.onrender.com/

I’m sharing it because I think there’s a lot to learn from actually taking a product from an idea to a functioning platform, especially when you're building most of it yourself.