How We Built a Free, Searchable PYQ Archive for GJU Students

Ask any student how they revise and previous-year question papers come up first. They show the pattern — which topics repeat, how questions are framed, what a real paper feels like under time. The problem is finding them: PYQs live in WhatsApp forwards, seniors' folders and dead Drive links, named things like 'final_final_2.pdf'. GJU PYQ started as a simple fix for that at our own university, and this is how we built it.

The real problem wasn't papers — it was findability

We weren't short of papers; we were short of structure. A pile of PDFs is only useful if a student can get to the exact one they need in seconds — their course, their semester, the right subject. So the first decision was that the archive would be organised and searchable from day one, not a folder of downloads. Around 600 papers only helps if the right three are one search away.

Organising by how students actually look

Students don't think in file names; they think 'my branch, this semester, this subject'. So papers are catalogued along those lines — course and semester as the primary axes — so browsing mirrors how someone actually asks the question. Search sits on top for when a student knows the subject and wants to jump straight to it.

• Browse by course and semester for the common case
• Search by subject when you know exactly what you want
• Every paper opens as a clean, viewable PDF
• Free to use, because exam prep shouldn't sit behind a paywall

The stack, and why

The site runs on Next.js with Supabase behind it — a deliberately small stack. Next.js gives fast, crawlable pages so a student searching the web can land straight on the right subject; Supabase stores the paper catalogue and its metadata without us running a server. It is deployed on Cloudflare Pages. The whole thing is designed to stay cheap to run and simple to maintain, which is what lets it stay free.

Why we keep it free

GJU PYQ is one of the products Ventron builds and runs itself. Keeping it free and low-cost to operate is the point, not a phase — the same instinct behind how we built Hisar Connect at zero cost. If you are weighing whether your own idea should be a web app, a site, or both, we wrote about that decision here. You can browse the archive at gjupyq.ventron.in.