[WIP] Design complete architecture for finance website

[Copilot]

Thanks for asking me to work on this. I will get started on it and keep this PR's description up to date as I form a plan and make progress.

Original prompt

You are a Principal Software Architect, Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Security Engineer and Product Designer. Your task is to design, implement and deliver a complete, production-ready finance website written entirely in English. The project must be fully functional from first install and usable immediately without additional setup. The website must be scalable to high traffic, secure by default, SEO-optimized, and easy to extend long-term via an admin dashboard.

The architecture must be modular and follow modern MVC or component-based principles with a clean separation between frontend, backend, and admin panel. The database must be SQLite only. Do not use MySQL, PostgreSQL or external managed databases. All queries must use prepared statements, proper indexing, and be optimized for read-heavy traffic. A migration system must exist to allow future schema updates.

On first launch, the application must automatically detect that it is not installed and redirect to a first-time install wizard. The install wizard must check system requirements, create the SQLite database, create all tables and indexes, generate configuration files, allow the creation of the first admin account, configure basic site settings such as site name and base URL, configure default SEO settings, and then permanently disable and lock the installer after completion so it cannot be accessed again.

The entire system must be secure by default. Implement protections against SQL injection, cross-site scripting, CSRF, session hijacking, brute force attacks, comment spam, and abusive traffic. Passwords must be hashed using modern algorithms. Admin authentication must use secure sessions, CSRF tokens, rate limiting, and hardened cookies. User-submitted HTML content must be sanitized while still allowing rich HTML formatting inside articles. Security headers must be set globally.

The admin panel must be fully featured and production-ready. After login, the admin dashboard must show a clear overview including total articles, total categories, total comments, total page views, and total unique visitors calculated by unique IP address. It must also display traffic trends over time. Analytics must be privacy-aware and stored efficiently in SQLite.

The admin must be able to create articles manually with full control over title, slug, category, tags, featured image, HTML content, publish status, timestamps, and SEO metadata. The content editor must support raw HTML editing and preview. All articles must be editable after creation.

The admin must also be able to create articles using AI. In this flow, the admin provides a keyword. The system uses an AI API to generate a long-form finance article including a title and meta description. After generation, the system must support rewriting the article using at least three to four free paraphrasing or rewriting APIs. The admin must be able to apply multiple rewrites and edit the final content before publishing. No article should be published automatically without admin approval.

Categories and tags must be fully manageable from the admin panel. Categories must support hierarchy. Each category and tag must have its own SEO metadata and clean URL. Editing or deleting categories must correctly update related articles.

Users must be able to comment on articles from the public site. Comments must be stored securely, rate-limited, protected against spam, and require moderation from the admin panel. The admin must be able to approve, reject, or delete comments.

An internal analytics system must track page views and unique visitors per page using IP-based uniqueness. Analytics must be viewable per page and over time in the admin panel. The system must be optimized so analytics collection does not slow down page rendering.

The public website must have a premium dark UI inspired visually and behaviorally by Netflix. The design must use large typography, card-based layouts, smooth animations, transitions, micro-interactions, and a modern responsive layout. The website must be fully responsive and mobile-first. Animations must use modern CSS and JavaScript techniques.

The homepage must contain a hero section with a clear value proposition for finance education, a primary call-to-action leading to a “Start Here” page, featured guides, a category overview, and a newsletter subscription box. The homepage must be optimized for conversions and SEO.

The Start Here page must guide users through curated learning paths such as beginner, intermediate, and advanced finance journeys. Each path must link to a logical sequence of articles designed to build financial knowledge progressively.

The blog listing page must support category filtering, pagination, and SEO-friendly URLs. Individual article pages must include optimized SEO metadata, structured data, internal linking, a comment section, and clear typography for long-form reading.

The website must include a dedicated Tools section. This section must include a compo...

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