📸 Photo Salon – A Hub for Photography Clubs & Competitions

Photo Salon is a modern web app designed for photographers who want to organize photo clubs, host competitions, and conduct critiques in a structured and engaging way. Inspired by the rich history of art salons, where artists gathered to showcase and refine their work, Photo Salon brings this tradition into the digital age—creating a space where photographers can connect, learn, and grow through community-driven feedback and friendly competition.

🚀 Why Photo Salon?

• Inspired by Tradition – Reviving the spirit of classic art salons in a modern, digital space.
• Built for Photographers – A tool by photographers, for photographers, designed to enhance skills through critique and competition.
• Seamless & Intuitive – An easy-to-use platform to organize, compete, and connect in the photography world.

Table of contents

• Installation Quick Guide
• Quick Start
• Helpful VSCode Extensions
• Installation Links

Installation Quick Guide

Assuming you already have Node, go, and Postgresql installed

  NOTE: Use brew list to check your casks and and formulae already installed  

Install golang-migrate cli, pnpm, buf, sqlc, and minio

brew install golang-migrate
brew install pnpm
brew install bufbuild/buf/buf
brew install sqlc
brew install minio/stable/minio

Quick Start

1. Install server go modules

go mod tidy

2. Next, install protoc-gen-connect-go

go install connectrpc.com/connect/cmd/protoc-gen-connect-go@latest
[ -n "$(go env GOBIN)" ] && export PATH="$(go env GOBIN):${PATH}"
[ -n "$(go env GOPATH)" ] && export PATH="$(go env GOPATH)/bin:${PATH}"

3. Ensure the following is included in you .zshrc or related profile

# .zshrc or .bash_profile or whatever
alias air='~/go/bin/air'
export PATH=$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin

4. Now install client node modules

pnpm install --dir client

5. You'll need to create a database for bigapp and grant permissions to admin

CREATE DATABASE bigapp;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE bigapp TO admin;
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA public TO admin;

Depending on the name you choose for the database you'll need to update the reference in 2 places:

# /server/.env
export POSTGRES_URL=postgresql://admin:admin@localhost:5432/<DB_NAME>?sslmode=disable

# Makefile
models:
	pg_dump --schema-only <DB_NAME> > server/schema.sql
	sqlc generate -f server/sqlc.yaml

6. Create account with Mailtrap that you'll use to test emails (important for sign-up/in flows)

1. Sign-up with Mailtrap
2. Navigate to email testing
3. Add a project
4. Add an inbox (Not sure if this happens automatically)
5. Copy username and password for your project and set them to SMTP_USERNAME and SMTP_PASSWORD respectively inside your /server/.env

7. Export config env file for minio

export MINIO_CONFIG_ENV_FILE=/etc/default/minio

8. Run the make commands for setting things up

  NOTE: depending on where you want your minio store to be you'll need to update the Makefile  

minio:
  minio server  --console-address :9001 ./data

make minio
make migrate-up
make models
make codegen

9. Run the application 🎉

make dev

Other things

VSCode Extensions

• Code Spell Checker
• Tailwind IntelliSense
• ESLint
• Go
• Prettier
• Github Style Markdown

Installation Links

You'll probably need to install a couple of tools before running the app:

• go -- Install steps
• pnpm -- Install steps
• postgreSQL -- Install steps
• psql -- should be included with postgreSQL installation
• bufbuild/buf/buf -- Install steps
• sqlc -- Install steps
• golang-migrate -- Install steps