Notebud

Notebud is a Laravel + Livewire app for writing notes, uploading files, and sharing content with classmates by username. It is designed for fast, secure, and fair academic collaboration, no email or phone required.

University labs typically don't allow personal devices, no phones, no laptops. When students need to save their work, the only option is cloud services like Google Drive, Mega, or Mediafire. But those require email addresses and OTP codes that students can't access without their phones. Even worse, logging into personal accounts on shared lab computers is risky, it's easy to forget to sign out.

Notebud solves this. It's a web app where students can save notes and files using just a username and password, no email, no OTP, no personal cloud accounts. Students can also share notes and files with classmates instantly by typing their username.

Tip

Live: notebud.cc
Alternative: notebud-qo9d.onrender.com
Support Email: contact@notebud.cc

Academic Use Only – Disclaimer

Notebud is intended strictly for fair academic use.

• Do not use this platform to facilitate cheating, plagiarism, or any form of academic dishonesty.
• Do not use Notebud for any illegal activities or to violate your institution's code of conduct.
• The developer is not responsible for any misuse, academic consequences, or legal issues arising from the use of this software.

By using Notebud, you agree to use it ethically and at your own risk.

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Features

• No email or phone required — sign up with just a username and password
• Safe on shared computers — no personal accounts to forget to sign out of
• Share by username — send notes or files to classmates without email addresses
• Username/password authentication with Cloudflare Turnstile on login and registration
• Recovery-code based account recovery flow (/recover-account)
• Mandatory recovery-code handoff after registration
• Markdown note creation, editing, search, and sharing
• File upload/download and username-based sharing
• In-app notifications for share activity
• Per-user storage quotas (default 20 MB + grace)
• Admin user management with quota overrides
• Super-fast Redis object caching and invalidation
• Automated Docker CI/CD deployments via GitHub Actions
• SEO basics: dynamic meta tags, canonical URLs, sitemap.xml, robots.txt

Stack

• Laravel 13
• Livewire 4 + Flux UI
• Tailwind CSS 4
• Laravel Fortify
• Pest + Pint
• Docker (single production-style container: PHP-FPM + Nginx + Supervisor)

Storage and Upload Limits

• Default per-user quota: 20 MB (DEFAULT_STORAGE_QUOTA_BYTES=20971520)
• Grace allowance: 1 MB (STORAGE_QUOTA_GRACE_BYTES=1048576)
• Per-file upload validation limit: 10 MB (max:10240 in FileUpload)
• Docker PHP limits currently set to 10M (upload_max_filesize, post_max_size)

If you want larger single-file uploads, increase both Laravel validation and Docker PHP ini limits.

Local Development (non-Docker)

Requirements

• PHP 8.4+
• Composer
• Node.js 20+
• SQLite

Setup

git clone https://github.com/ktauchathuranga/notebud.git
cd notebud
git checkout laravel

composer install
npm install
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
touch database/database.sqlite
php artisan migrate

Run

composer dev

This starts app server, queue worker, logs, and Vite at http://localhost:8000.

Docker (Production-Style Testing)

docker-compose is not used in this project anymore.

1. Build image

docker build -t notebud-test .

2. Run container with env file

docker rm -f notebud-local || true
docker run --name notebud-local -p 8080:80 --env-file /path/to/prod.local.env notebud-test

3. Open app

• http://localhost:8080

Important local-prod note

For local Docker prod testing, set:

APP_URL=http://localhost:8080

Do not use your live domain as APP_URL in local Docker, otherwise assets can resolve to remote URLs and trigger CORS/MIME errors.

Environment Notes

• Local default DB: SQLite
• Production DB: TiDB Cloud (MySQL-compatible, SSL required)
• Upload disk switch:
  • local: UPLOADS_DISK=uploads
  • production: UPLOADS_DISK=r2
• Avatars:
  • local default: public
  • production default: r2

Database Seeding

Seed imported legacy data:

php artisan db:seed --class="Database\\Seeders\\OldDatabaseSeeder"

Inside Docker:

docker exec -it notebud-local php artisan db:seed --class="Database\\Seeders\\OldDatabaseSeeder"

Fresh DB + old seed inside Docker:

docker exec -it notebud-local php artisan migrate:fresh --seed --seeder="Database\\Seeders\\OldDatabaseSeeder"

Useful Commands

Command	Description
composer dev	Run local dev stack
composer test	Pint check + tests
composer lint	Auto-fix style
composer lint:check	Style check only
php artisan test	Run tests

Deployment

The repository is Docker-first for production deployment. Provide environment variables from .env.production in your platform (for example Render, VPS, or any container host).

A continuous deployment (CD) pipeline (.github/workflows/deploy.yml) is included, which automatically builds the Docker image remotely, caches composer/npm dependencies, pushes to Docker Hub, and triggers a live deployment webhook whenever code is merged into the main branch.

License

MIT