Building a Subscription-Based Captive Portal: Lessons from Phase 4
In today’s digital world, internet access has become a necessity. For businesses that provide Wi-Fi or data services, offering a subscription-based captive portal is one way to make connectivity both manageable and sustainable.
During my Phase 4 project, I worked on developing a full-stack web application that allows users to:
Sign up or log in before accessing internet services.
Select subscription plans (daily, weekly, monthly).
Manage their subscriptions from a simple dashboard.
Key Features I Implemented
User Authentication – New users can register, while existing users log in securely.
Subscription Management – Users can choose a plan that fits their needs and view their active subscription.
Database Integration – All user and subscription data is stored in a PostgreSQL database for reliability.
Backend API – A Flask backend handles routes for authentication, subscriptions, and data retrieval.
Frontend UI – A React frontend gives users a clean and simple interface.
Challenges Faced
One of the biggest challenges was ensuring that new users’ subscriptions were properly linked to their accounts. At first, the signup worked, but subscriptions didn’t display immediately. Debugging this helped me learn more about data relationships between users and their subscriptions in the database.
Lessons Learned
Full-stack development requires clear data flow between frontend, backend, and database.
Authentication and subscriptions are tightly connected — if one breaks, the other won’t work well.
Testing with real user flows (signup → select plan → manage subscription) is the best way to catch issues.
Final Thoughts
This project showed me how technology powers everyday services like internet access. Building a subscription-based captive portal was a great way to apply concepts in authentication, CRUD operations, and database management while solving a real-world problem.
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