Travl.com

Travl.com is a scalable Express and Handlebars travel guide for Indian destinations. The app has been moved away from one hard-coded page per place into shared routes, data services, reusable templates, and backend APIs.

The current build includes a protected destination library, reusable destination detail pages, admin content editing, backend-driven currency conversion, a small site assistant, contact and feedback submissions, legacy route redirects, and responsive UI updates for the home, destination, search, and library screens.

What Changed Recently

• Replaced hard-coded destination templates with a shared destination data model, seed data, services, and reusable Handlebars views.
• Added /more as a reliable paginated destination library with grid and alt layouts. Grid pages now fill from the available destination data instead of a fixed six-card page.
• Fixed the /more?layout=grid&page=1 server error caused by passing layout as a render variable to express-handlebars.
• Added protected destination browsing. Visitors are redirected to login before opening /more or /destinations/:slug.
• Added auth, admin dashboards, destination create/edit/delete screens, submission cleanup, and admin approval routes.
• Added backend APIs for search, currency rates, and the AI guide.
• Restored image-scroll/parallax behavior with transform-based JavaScript instead of background-attachment: fixed, heavy filters, or backdrop blur.
• Updated UI assets for the feedback and AI side buttons, search hover/focus states, destination cards, destination detail panels, maps, and alternate destination rows.
• Added Node tests that cover routes, redirects, auth-gated pages, pagination, currency, search, and assistant responses.
• Added GitHub Actions CI and Vercel serverless routing.

Architecture

• src/app.js configures Express, Handlebars, sessions, static assets, routes, and error handling.
• src/server.js starts the local server. Vercel imports src/app.js directly.
• src/routes maps public pages, auth, admin, and API endpoints.
• src/controllers contains request handlers and render context composition.
• src/services contains destination lookup, site content, submissions, currency-rate, and assistant logic.
• src/models contains MongoDB models for users, destinations, site content, currency-rate cache, and submissions.
• src/data contains fallback seed content so local pages can render without MongoDB.
• templates contains layouts, partials, and reusable views.
• public/assets contains the active CSS and browser JavaScript.
• test/app.test.js verifies the main server behavior with Node's test runner.

Environment

Create .env from .env.example.

cp .env.example .env

Required for production:

• MDBKEY: MongoDB Atlas connection string. MONGODB_URI is also accepted.
• SESSION_SECRET: long random value for signed sessions.

Optional:

• EXCHANGE_RATES_API_KEY: exchangeratesapi.io key. Without it, the converter uses safe fallback rates.
• ADMIN_EMAIL and ADMIN_PASSWORD: optional seed-time admin account.
• PORT: local server port. Defaults to 3000.
• FORMSPREE_CONTACT_URL and FORMSPREE_FEEDBACK_URL: reserved for external form integrations.

Development

Use Node.js 22.x. The repo includes .nvmrc, and Vercel reads the same runtime from package.json.

nvm use
npm install
npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:3000.

Common pages:

• /: home page.
• /login and /register: account access.
• /more?layout=grid&page=1: paginated destination library.
• /more?layout=alt&page=1: alternate destination library layout.
• /destinations/taj-mahal: reusable destination detail page.
• /currency: backend-driven currency converter.
• /admin: admin dashboard for approved admins.

See USAGE.md for route, admin, content, and deployment usage.

Seed MongoDB

The app can render from fallback data, but production content should be seeded into MongoDB:

npm run seed

The seed loads the destination library and homepage copy into MongoDB. If ADMIN_EMAIL and ADMIN_PASSWORD are set, it also creates or promotes that account as an admin.

New destinations should be added through /admin/destinations/new when MongoDB is connected. For fallback-only development, add entries to src/data/destinations.js with a unique slug, images, summary, location, facts, foods, myths, gallery, and optional legacyPaths.

Quality

npm test
npm run audit

The GitHub workflow runs install, tests, and audit checks on pushes and pull requests.

Deployment

Vercel is the source of truth. Configure MDBKEY, SESSION_SECRET, ADMIN_EMAIL, ADMIN_PASSWORD, and optionally EXCHANGE_RATES_API_KEY in Vercel project settings.

vercel.json routes all requests to src/app.js through @vercel/node.