README

🇷🇺 Русский | 🇬🇧 English

A modern, lightweight news aggregator built with PHP 8.1+ and MySQL, inspired by Hacker News and Lobster. Features a modular HMVC architecture, real-time updates, and comprehensive moderation tools.

🚀 Features

Core Functionality

• News Stories - Submit and browse news stories with URL or text content
• Comments - Threaded comment system with nested replies
• Voting System - Upvote/downvote stories and comments with real-time updates
• User Authentication - Secure registration, login, and session management
• User Profiles - Activity tracking, submitted stories, and comment history

Advanced Features

• Real-time Updates - AJAX-powered live updates for votes and comments
• Moderation Tools - Ban users, domains, and manage content
• Audit Logging - Comprehensive activity tracking for all administrative actions
• Rate Limiting - Protection against abuse with configurable limits
• CSRF Protection - Security tokens for all form submissions
• Soft Deletes - Recoverable content deletion
• Search - Full-text search across stories and comments

User Experience

• Responsive Design - Mobile-friendly interface
• Dark Mode - System-aware theme switching
• Keyboard Shortcuts - Power-user navigation
• Markdown Support - Rich text formatting in comments

🛠️ Technology Stack

Component	Technology
Backend	PHP 8.1+ (no framework, custom HMVC)
Database	MySQL 8.0+ with PDO
Frontend	Vanilla JavaScript, CSS3
Architecture	Modular HMVC pattern
Security	CSRF tokens, rate limiting, password hashing (bcrypt)
Server	Apache/Nginx with mod_rewrite

📦 Installation

Install the package through Composer.

Requirements

• PHP 8.1 or higher
• MySQL 8.0 or higher
• Apache/Nginx with URL rewriting enabled
• Composer (optional, for development)

Step 1: Clone Repository

git clone https://github.com/evgip/w3a.git
cd w3a

Step 2: Configure Database

1. Create a MySQL database:

CREATE DATABASE w3a CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

1. Import the schema:

mysql -u your_username -p w3a < db/schema.sql

1. Update database credentials in app/Config/config.phpp:

'database' => [
	'host' => 'MySQL-8.2',
	'port' => '3306',
	'dbname' => 'soc',
	'username' => 'root',
	'password' => '',
	'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
]

Step 3: Configure Application

Edit app/Config/config.php:

'app' => [
	'name' => 'w3a',
	'url' => 'http://soc.local',
	'lang' => en', 

Step 4: Set Permissions

chmod -R 755 storage/
chmod -R 755 public/

Step 5: Configure Web Server

Apache (.htaccess already included):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

Nginx:

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}

Step 6: Login information

• Admin: admin@example.com / password
• User: test@test.ru / password

📁 Project Structure

w3a/
├── app/
│	├── Config/                 # Configuration
│   │	└── config.php          # App settings
│   ├── Core/                   # Core framework classes
│   │   ├── Router.php          # URL routing
│   │   ├── Controller.php      # Base controller
│   │   ├── Model.php           # Base model
│   │   ├── Database.php        # PDO wrapper
│   │   ├── Auth.php            # Authentication
│   │   ├── Session.php         # Session management
│   │   ├── Request.php         # HTTP request handling
│   │   ├── Response.php        # HTTP responses
│   │   ├── View.php            # Template rendering
│   │   ├── Audit.php           # Audit logging
│   │   └── Validator.php       # Input validation
│   │
│   └── Modules/                 # Feature modules (HMVC)
│       ├── Auth/               # Authentication module
│       │   ├── Controllers/
│       │   ├── Models/
│       │   ├── Views/
│       │   └── routes.php
│       ├── Stories/            # News stories module
│       ├── Comments/           # Comments module
│       ├── Votes/              # Voting system
│       ├── Users/              # User profiles
│       ├── Moderation/         # Moderation tools
│       ├── Origins/            # Domain management
│       └── Api/                # REST API
├── public/                      # Public assets
│   ├── index.php              # Entry point
│   ├── css/                   # Stylesheets
│   ├── js/                    # JavaScript files
│   └── images/                # Images
│
├── storage/                     # Writable storage
│   ├── logs/                  # Application logs
│   └── cache/                 # Cache files
│
├── db/                          # Database
│   └── schema.sql             # Database schema
│
└── README.md                    # This file

🔒 Security Features

• Password Hashing - bcrypt with automatic salt
• CSRF Protection - Token validation on all forms
• SQL Injection Prevention - Prepared statements (PDO)
• XSS Protection - Output escaping with htmlspecialchars()
• Rate Limiting - Configurable per-action limits
• Session Security - HTTP-only cookies, regeneration
• Input Validation - Server-side validation for all inputs

🧪 Development

Debug Mode

Enable in app/Config/config.php:

'env' => 'development', // development или production

📊 Database Schema

Core Tables

• users - User accounts and profiles
• stories - News stories (URL or text)
• comments - Threaded comments
• votes - Upvotes/downvotes
• sessions - Active user sessions
• audit_logs - Administrative activity log
• domains - Banned domains list
• flags - Complaint log

See db/schema.sql for complete schema.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please follow these steps:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Inspired by the functionality of Hacker News and Lobster
• Speed and simplicity of the HLEB framework
• Built with vanilla PHP (no frameworks)
• Modular HMVC architecture

📧 Contact

• Author: Evg
• Repository: https://github.com/evgip/w3a
• Issues: https://github.com/evgip/w3a/issues

⭐ If you find this project useful, please consider giving it a star on GitHub!