LifeInText.com

The Problem

People have stories worth preserving but nowhere good to keep them. Social media is too public. Notes apps are too plain. I built the platform I wanted to use myself.

What I Built

A multi-mode journaling platform — private secured journals, anonymous public writing with comments, and shared event spaces where groups contribute journals and photo albums together. Think a wedding, a trip, a family reunion — everyone adds memories, one place holds them all.

Technical Challenges

• Privacy model — four visibility states (private, anonymous, friends-only, public) at the content level, not just journal level
• Event system — groups journals + albums + people under a single shareable event context
• Media pipeline — S3 with pre-signed URLs, never serving user media through app server
• Theme engine — per-journal CSS variable sets, stored and applied at render time

Architecture

Results & Impact

• Sole founder — design, dev, infrastructure
• Private, anonymous and social modes all seeing active usage
• Memory preservation working as intended — users reading journals from years prior

Stack Deep Dive

• PostgreSQL for relational journal/album/event hierarchy
• Next.js frontend
• Tailwind
• Nest.js backend
• AWS S3 for media
• Docker
• Nginx as web server and proxy
• Lets encrypt SSL
• Cloudflare as CDN
• Deployed using Ansible automation