Architecture Overview

Architecture Overview

Proposed architecture

FreedomClassifieds is structured as a server-rendered Laravel 12 application with classic Blade pages, a MariaDB primary datastore, database-backed queues/sessions for safe bootstrap, and a Redis-ready abstraction for later promotion when Redis is installed.

Core layers

• Routing and page delivery through Laravel web routes and Blade templates
• Domain configuration in config/classifieds.php
• Authentication boundary prepared for Google OAuth in phase 1
• Public browsing layer for category, location, search, listing, and seller profile pages
• Moderation and operations layer for admin workflows, abuse review, docs management, and automation draft review
• Future API/service layer for n8n draft ingestion and internal automation

Chosen stack and justification

• Laravel 12
  • Strong fit for server-rendered SEO pages
  • Mature mail, queue, validation, authorization, and admin ecosystem
• MariaDB/MySQL
  • Already available on the VM
  • Good fit for relational listing, moderation, and campaign inventory data
• Redis-ready design
  • Preferred for cache/queue in production once installed
  • Current scaffold keeps database-backed queue/session defaults to avoid blocking bootstrap
• Blade with restrained CSS
  • Supports the Craigslist-style minimal experience
  • Avoids SPA complexity and preserves crawlability
• Postmark
  • Clean transactional outbound email for verification, reset, moderation, and notifications
• mCaptcha first, mosparo fallback
  • Keeps anti-bot strategy self-hosted and abstractable

Route map

Public routes

• /
• /listings
• /c/{category}
• /l/{location}
• /listing/{category}/{location}/{slug}
• /seller/{seller}
• /signin
• /contact
• /docs
• /docs/{slug}
• /robots.txt
• /sitemap.xml

Admin and account inventory routes

• /dashboard
• /admin
• /admin/docs

API placeholders

• /api/v1/status
• /api/v1/automation/drafts

UI page inventory

• Home page with search, categories, locations, featured listings, and ad placeholders
• Listing index/search results page
• Category page variant
• Location page variant
• Listing detail page
• Seller public profile page
• Sign-in page placeholder for Google OAuth
• Contact/help page placeholder with captcha slot
• Docs index and doc detail pages

Admin inventory

• Listing moderation queue
• User review and trust controls
• Category and location management
• Ad slot and campaign inventory management
• Abuse report review
• Automation draft review
• Docs page management
• Feature flag controls

Risks and tradeoffs

• Composer is now available locally, but Redis is still not installed on the VM
• Google OAuth and Filament admin were not package-installed in this scaffold yet, so routes and docs are ready before those integrations are layered in
• Database-backed queues are simpler for bootstrap but less scalable than Redis-backed workers
• Blade keeps the app fast and crawlable, but dynamic dashboards should stay modest to avoid slipping into SPA complexity

Future-ready notes for n8n trend-driven draft generation

• Use /api/v1/automation/drafts as the ingestion seam
• Store inbound draft payloads in automation_drafts
• Require human review before publication
• Keep is_machine_generated and review metadata on listings for auditability
• Gate rollout behind feature flags