ReadWithUs — Online Tutoring Platform

Context

A tutoring marketplace connecting learners and tutors across many countries — one-to-one lessons, group classes, packages, wallet and gift cards. The codebase is a large MVC PHP application (1,300+ PHP files) built on the commercial Yo!Coach platform.

System design

 Learner / Tutor / Admin (web)
            │
   ┌────────▼─────────┐
   │ Apache + PHP MVC │  application · dashboard · manager (admin)
   └──┬───────┬───────┘
      │       │
   MySQL   Plugins (attach/detach per client)
   orders, ├─ Payment gateways: Stripe, bank transfer
   lessons,├─ Meeting tools: Zoom, Lesson Space
   availability,├─ Google Calendar / OAuth
   transactions └─ Mailchimp, reCAPTCHA, AWS S3, PHPMailer, mPDF

The hard parts of this domain

• Availability across 70+ countries with daylight saving — general vs weekly availability, converted per user time zone
• Six order types (lessons, group classes, packages, wallet top-ups, gift cards, subscriptions) with refunds and tutor payouts
• Financial reporting — gross, discount, net, paid-to-tutor, refunded, per day

My work (6 months)

Feature development, customisation and maintenance on the PHP/MySQL codebase — working inside a large existing system, with its plugin architecture for payments and meeting tools, and keeping changes safe for live users and money flows.