🎬 Building MovieNest: From Design Clone to Dev Debauchery (ft. VPNs, Bugs & Debounce)
Yo fellow netizens 👾,
Ever tried building a movie app and accidentally learned full-stack networking? Yeah… that happened.
So, I set out to build a movie discovery platform for my MovieNest base — a React frontend that was supposed to be a chill, “just-design-it” project. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
Let me walk you through the chaotic beauty that unfolded (with humor, caffeine, and broken CORS dreams).
🎨 1. Cloning JavaScript Mastery, but Make It ✨ Fabulous
Big shoutout to JavaScript Mastery for the amazing design base — your UI was my canvas, and I painted over it with:
- Glassmorphism: Because who doesn’t love see-through boxes in 2025?
- Framer Motion: Micro animations so smooth they could dance on butter.
- Custom UI polish: Added my own spice to the layout with modern CSS to boost the UX.
So yeah, it started as a clone, but now it’s a clone with drip.
Before
After
🧠 2. Debounce or Die (API Rate Limit Edition)
TMDB be like:
"You hit me with too many requests… now you must suffer."
Me:
“Nah Bro, I got
debounce()from npm.”
I wired up input fields with debounce logic so API calls chill out while users furiously type “Spiderrmaaan but with 3 a’s.”
Now my API server is less stressed than I am before a code review.
🔥 3. Trending? I Gotchu With My Homemade Algorithm
Who needs a data scientist when you can just… fake it till you make it?
I whipped up a very serious and definitely academic algorithm:
Every time you search for a movie, I increment a counter. Movies with more hits = more trending. Boom. DIY trending.
It’s like Google Trends but powered by your indecisive scrolling.
🌍 4. TMDB Ghosted My Region, So I Became the Proxy I Needed
Here’s where the real plot twist hit me harder than a JS bug in production.
TMDB didn’t show results in my region. Solution? VPN.
Then I had an epiphany 💡:
“What if... I became my own VPN?”
Boom. Proxy server time.
But wait — plot twist #2: my backend is Appwrite now.
Cue montage:
- Me, reading docs.
- Me, writing a serverless function.
- Me, crying because of CORS.
- Me, realizing URLs need decoding.
- Me, breaking and fixing the same code 17 times.
Finally, I did it. Appwrite function deployed. Proxy working. I could see movies from all over the world again. The web was healing.
🧹 5. Virtual Scrolling? More Like Mental Scrolling
Currently diving into virtual scrolling so users don't download the entire TMDB database when they open the app.
Still learning… so if it breaks, it was probably on purpose. 🤡
🚀 6. Coming Soon: Parallelism, Lazy-Loading, and Magic
Future updates I’m planning to flex:
- 🚀 Parallel data fetching
- 🪄 Progressive loading
- 🧩 Code-splitting
- 💤 Lazy loading
- 🧠 Aggressive caching (because speed is a feature)
The goal? Butter-smooth UX and low time-to-first-interaction.
🤖 7. AI-Powered Madness Coming Soon
Also experimenting with spicy AI features like:
- 🎭 Mood-based recommendations
- 🎤 Voice search (talk to your screen, it's 2025)
- 📈 Real-time trends
- 🤝 Collaborative watchlists
Basically… making Netflix nervous.
🤝 Final Words
This app isn’t just a portfolio piece — it’s my dev journal, my test lab, my digital playground. I’m building it live, breaking stuff, fixing stuff, and learning out loud. If you see a bug, it’s a feature. If you see a delay, it’s probably me debugging at 2am with 17 console logs and a dream.
If you wanna follow the chaos and cheer me on, drop your thoughts below or follow me on GitHub and Linkedin.
Website
MovieNest,
Top comments (2)
Keep it up myself! 👏
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