Hey everyone 👋, I’m Pradeep, and I recently completed and deployed my Student Attendance Management System using the MERN stack. This blog is about my journey — from an idea to a live production app with CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and cloud deployment.
🌱 Where It Started
Like most students, I saw how messy attendance tracking can be in real life. Manual registers, spreadsheets, and no clear visibility for students. That’s when I thought — why not build a modern attendance management system that’s secure, responsive, and production-ready?
🛠️ Tech Stack
I decided to go with the MERN stack for flexibility and scalability:
Frontend: React + Tailwind CSS (clean UI, responsive, dark mode support)
Backend: Node.js + Express (API-driven, JWT authentication)
Database: MongoDB + Mongoose (flexible schema design)
Auth & Security: JWT, bcrypt, input sanitization
Deployment & DevOps: Docker, GitHub Actions, Render (backend), Netlify (frontend)
✨ Features I Built
👩🏫 Teacher
Add / delete students
Mark and update attendance
View records in a dynamic table
🎓 Student
Secure login
View personal attendance records
Track percentage progress
🛡️ Admin
Role-based access control
Protected routes for teacher dashboards
🔒 Security First
Instead of hardcoding secrets, I made sure to use environment variables for both frontend (Netlify) and backend (Render). That way, credentials like MongoDB URI and JWT keys are never exposed.
🚀 Deployment Journey
This was my favorite part — taking the project live.
CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions
Build Docker images → Push to Docker Hub
Backend auto-deployed on Render via webhook
Frontend auto-deployed on Netlify
The best part? Every new commit automatically triggers builds & deployments.
🎥 Demo Access
Want to try it out?
Teacher ID: t001 | Password: abc@123
Student ID: std_1 | Password: linus@123
📌 Lessons I Learned
Building is one thing, but deploying securely is where the real learning happens.
Docker + GitHub Actions + Render + Netlify = a professional-grade pipeline.
Writing clean code is important, but thinking about scalability, auth, and security is just as crucial.
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