- Full-stack developer — product, platform, and story infrastructure
- 8 months
- 2025
- Live
Overview
OneStoryPlanet is a full-stack storytelling platform where people share real stories from their own lives as video, voice recordings or written pieces. Stories are private by default and become public only when the storyteller chooses to publish them after review.
Problem
What was actually wrong.
People wanted a calmer, more respectful place to share personal narratives than a social feed, but existing options were either too noisy, too public by default, or too limited for real-life storytelling across multiple formats.
Goals
- Create a safe, private-by-default storytelling experience
- Support multiple story formats without fragmenting the product
- Add structured discovery around life themes instead of endless feeds
- Build a creator economy with monetisation, moderation and community tools
Solution
The approach taken.
I built a Laravel 11 platform with React and Inertia on the front end, a MySQL-backed content model underneath, and a publishing workflow designed around privacy, moderation, discovery and community trust. The result is a storytelling experience that feels personal, searchable and safe rather than algorithm-driven and disposable.
Architecture
Private-by-default story model
Each story begins in a private state. The author controls visibility, while a review step and moderation layer keep public content safe and intentional.
Multi-format creation engine
Video, voice and written stories all flow through the same core publishing pipeline with their own editing experience, metadata and review process.
Theme-based discovery
Instead of a feed-first model, content is grouped by themes such as love, loss, recovery, starting over and resilience, making the experience more meaningful and more searchable.
Community and monetisation layer
Likes, comments, follows, gifts, wallets, and Stripe/PayPal payouts create a creator economy without sacrificing trust or moderation controls.
Technologies
Platform
- Laravel 11
- React 18
- Inertia.js
- Tailwind CSS
Data & media
- MySQL
- AWS RDS
- AWS S3
- FFmpeg
- HLS streaming
Realtime & payments
- Pusher
- Stripe
- PayPal
- PWA
Content & admin
- Spatie Permissions
- Spatie Media Library
- Schema.org
- IndexNow
Key features
Three story formats
Video stories support browser-based editing with trimming, captions, music and templates; voice stories include recording and waveform workflows; written stories include a rich-text editor with autosave and drafts.
Privacy and moderation
Stories are private by default, public content is reviewed before it goes live, and a blacklisted-word filter helps protect the community.
Theme discovery experience
The app creates dedicated landing pages for major themes, improving SEO and helping people discover stories about the experiences they are going through.
Creator ecosystem
People can follow creators, interact, send gifts, top up coins, and receive payouts via wallet and payment infrastructure.
Admin dashboard
The platform includes analytics, user and content management, payouts, transactions, withdrawals, and CMS tools to run content and campaigns.
Process
Define
Mapped the product around trust, privacy and intentional publishing rather than engagement mechanics that reward constant attention.
Design
Shaped each story format around the real authoring experience, ensuring the interface stayed simple while preserving flexibility for creators.
Build
Built the core story platform end to end, including editor flows, moderation, theme discovery, wallets and payment features.
Scale
Added metadata, streaming, and admin tooling so the platform could support growth while staying consistent, searchable and safe.
Screens
Story creation studio 
Discovery and community 
Operational dashboard
Challenges
What went wrong first.
Balancing safety and openness
The product needed to feel safe and personal without becoming overly restrictive, so privacy, moderation and audience control had to be built intentionally into the publishing flow.
Supporting multiple story formats
Video, voice and written storytelling each have different editing, storage and playback needs. The platform was designed around a single narrative model rather than separate disconnected flows.
Discovery without a hostile feed
Instead of a feed-first algorithm, theme-based landing pages and structured metadata gave users a calmer way to find the stories that matched their life experience.
Learnings
- Private-by-default publishing creates trust before traffic ever becomes a metric.
- Theme-based discovery is more human and more reliable than feed optimisation for personal storytelling.
- A creator model works only when moderation, identity and payments are treated as the same product problem.
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