Backend Modules

1. Identity Module

Manages authentication, authorization, and account security; stores user profiles, avatars, bios, and roles; supports OAuth integrations and premium status tracking.

Core Features

  • User registration/login (email/password, OAuth)
  • User profiles: username, avatar URL, bio
  • Password reset, email verification
  • Role basics (normal user, admin)
  • Premium subscription flag (basic support)

2. Catalog Module

Central repository of books, authors, series, genres, and publishers; supports metadata import from external APIs; provides public read-only access to other modules.

Core Features

  • Store/manage books, authors, series, genres
  • Import metadata from public APIs (Google Books, Open Library)
  • Expose read-only queries to other modules
  • Admin interface for corrections/updates

3. Shelves Module

Handles default and custom user shelves (“Want to Read”, “Currently Reading”, “Read”); tracks book progress by pages or percentage; supports privacy settings and shelf organization.

Core Features

  • Default shelves: “Want to Read”, “Currently Reading”, “Read”
  • Custom shelves creation (limited in MVP)
  • Track reading progress (pages, percent)
  • Add/remove/move books on shelves

4. Reviews Module

Stores star ratings, text reviews, spoiler flags, and review comments; supports likes, reactions, and moderation tools for quality control.

Core Features

  • Post, update, delete reviews with star ratings
  • Spoiler tags for text reviews
  • Comments on reviews (basic)
  • Like reviews

5. Social Module

Manages follow relationships, social activity feed, and notifications; records user-to-user interactions and broadcasts activity events to followers.

Core Features

  • Follow/unfollow users
  • Activity feed for followed users (new books, reviews)
  • Basic notifications for new followers, comments, likes

6. Discussions Module

Hosts book-specific and general community threads; supports nested posts, likes, and moderation for spam or abuse control.

Core Features

  • Book-specific and general discussion forums
  • Support for nested threads and replies
  • Private book clubs (invite-only groups)

  • Moderation tools for spam and abuse control

  • Automated spam filtering and content flagging (Phase 3+)

  • Advanced moderation workflows (AI-assisted) (Phase 3+)
  • Support for multimedia posts (images, links) (Phase 3+)
  • Analytics on community engagement (Phase 3+)

7. Challenges Module

Defines annual goals and thematic challenges; tracks participation and progress; integrates with Shelves to auto-update completion status.

Core Features

  • Create, join, and track reading challenges (e.g., “Read 10 books in June”) (Phase 2+)
  • Personal and community-wide goals
  • Progress tracking and notifications on challenge status

8. Gamification Module

Awards badges, points, and streaks for reading-related actions; maintains leaderboards; supports in-app reward redemption and microtransactions.

Core Features

  • Award badges, points, and streaks for actions (reading, reviews, challenges)
  • Leaderboards and achievement tracking
  • In-app store for redeeming points (avatar themes, badges)

9. Recommendations Module

Generates personalized book suggestions via AI and collaborative filtering; surfaces trending content and sponsored recommendations.

Core Features

  • Collaborative filtering-based book suggestions
  • Trending and popular book surfaces
  • Sponsored recommendation slots (marked clearly)

10. Search Module

Provides full-text and faceted search over books, authors, users, and lists; supports sorting, pagination, and advanced filters for premium users.

Core Features

  • Full-text search on books, authors, users
  • Basic filtering (genre, author name)

  • Pagination and sorting

  • Add premium filters (page count, publication year, subgenre) (Phase 2+)

  • Sponsored search result placements (Phase 2+)
  • Improved indexing and query optimization (Phase 2+)

11. Monetization Module

Centralizes all revenue streams including subscriptions, affiliate sales, sponsorships, in-app purchases, and event ticketing; tracks and reports financial performance.

Core Features

  • Free tier user management
  • Basic subscription plan with Stripe sandbox integration

  • Track premium status in Identity module

  • Add microtransactions for buying points/coins (Phase 3+)

  • Implement affiliate sales tracking (Phase 3+)
  • Basic sponsored content and ad campaigns (Phase 3+)

12. Analytics Module

Collects and processes usage data, engagement metrics, and system telemetry; supports dashboards, reporting, and data export; ensures privacy compliance.

Core Features

  • Collect user engagement metrics (daily active users, reads, reviews)
  • System telemetry (errors, performance)
  • Dashboard for key KPIs
  • Exportable reports

13. Admin Module

Provides tools for user and content moderation, bans, content flags, and workflow management; handles publisher/author management and access controls.

Core Features

  • User moderation tools (bans, suspensions)
  • Content flagging and review workflows
  • Publisher and author management interface
  • Audit logging and role-based access control

14. Media Module

Manages user-generated media uploads (avatars, book covers, audio snippets); handles storage, processing, CDN integration, and content delivery.

Core Features

  • Upload and store user avatars and book covers
  • Audio snippet uploads (audiobook samples)
  • Image processing (resizing, optimization)
  • CDN integration for fast delivery

14. Internationalization Module

Provides multilingual and locale-aware support for both UI and user-generated content. Handles language detection, translation resource management, and formatting of dates, numbers, and currencies according to user preferences or browser settings. From MVP, supports at least two languages (e.g., English + Turkish) with the ability to expand. Includes a simple translation resource store and integration hooks for crowdsource translation in future phases.

Core Features

  • Language & locale detection (from browser, user profile, or request headers)
  • UI text translation via resource files or database-backed key-value store
  • Culture-aware formatting (dates, numbers, times, currency)
  • Fallback mechanism (if translation missing, fall back to default language)
  • Content tagging for language (store languageCode with user-generated content)
  • Admin translation editor (Phase 2+)