Build a kick-ass PHP Microsite in under 4h

Welcome to my PHP Microsite Boilerplate!

Around 1.5 years ago, I built a boilerplate to enable developers, creating microsites with PHP from scratch in a very short time, while making no compromises regarding performance (Lighthouse score of 100, baby 😎), security, and SEO (see the original story here).

Since then, a lot of updates and upgrades went into the code base. The maybe most interesting one has been the integration with the headless open-source CMS Directus (for a story about that, click here).

Now, I officially want to introduce you to version 2 of this boilerplate (or almost framework)!

Besides a lot of bug fixes and even more updates, it includes even more fancy things like build scripts for css and JavaScript optimization and more.
Based on the original philosophy, it is still made for those, who are no super senior frontend developers; while being as flexible as possible. This means, you can use a ton of features, but you do not need to. If you are not familiar with DevOps, CI/CD, NodeJS, etc. — do not use it! You can still work with the boilerplate and create an extremely stable site.

You should check the GitHub page at https://github.com/jekuer/php-microsite-boilerplate for more details.

This article is all about demonstrating how it works and how it is set up (step-by-step). And I do so, by building the respective demo page from scratch, while blogging about it.

1. Getting the code

Navigate to the official GitHub repository at:
https://github.com/jekuer/php-microsite-boilerplate

Download or clone the code to your local system.

I hardly recommend to then create your own repository for it. At least I do so in this example. 😊

2. The base — web server setup

The boilerplate is prepared to run the php page on either Apache or nginx webservers. And even within Apache, there are sometimes multiple options depending on whether you are somehow restricted with regards to the available modules.