The PHP Microsite Boilerplate
There are cool frameworks for Frontend and Backend. Many cool languages and best practice. Still, they all focus on larger projects.
What if you just want to build a high performance, highly secure microsite, which can be easily moved to basically any cloud or webhoster (even shared hosting)?
Have a look at my PHP Microsite Boilerplate (Framework)!
→ Demo page.
The Story
As with many others, my web development career started with PHP. And I still love it — not saying it is a good choice for everything.
Over the last years, I have built hundreds of digital products and website. From small marketing pages to full-scale Software-as-a-Service solutions.
While, in the latter case, you usually put some work into finding the right architecture, the right languages, and the right hosting environment; the first case is different.
If you need to build a simple website quickly, you either have no server-side functionality, or a huge overhead (of code you don’t need), or critical dependencies, or low performance and bad security, or it definitely does not run on cheap shared hosting.
However, it is a common case to build a website, fast, with almost no resources, and no money for basically any infrastructure.
That’s where this PHP Microsite Boilerplate Framework steps in!
It includes all the basic setup, which would take you days, makes sure you benefit from great performance and security, while also providing you with some kick-ass features.
PHP is a good way to go, since it should run on basically every hosting environment.
It does not include any complex modules, crazy structures, or other overhead code. This makes it extremely easy to read and enables you to use it on every device in every situation (no need to spend hours setting up your IDE).
Still, it includes a lot of handy features. From easy PWA and AMP support out of the box to many SEO functionalities (like automatically generated sitemaps).
The maybe most important feature is its Directus CMS support. Directus is a modern, open source, headless content management system, which can be fully customized without the huge overhead of WordPress. This microsite boilerplate is already prepared to display the content from Directus. So, even if you need to add a fancy CMS for your marketing team, this package got your back (in combination with Directus).
Bottom line: If you are not planning to create the next multi-billion-dollar AI application, but rather need to get something out there fast, without a lot of resources, but high expectations, give it a try.
Didn’t you also always dream about reaching full score at Google’s Lighthouse report? Spoiler Alert: You get some confetti with this framework.
The Key Features
- Easy routing.
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) prepared.
- Progressive Web App (PWA) prepared.
- Multilanguage prepared.
- Directus CMS integration (such a hot headless CMS).
- GDPR and CCPA ready (regular site and AMP).
- Intelligent serviceworker cache.
- SEO optimized.
- Optimized for Social sharing.
- Extensive in-code documentation (if you are a beginner, jump into the code and read — it is also kind of a free “something of all” class).
- Security Headers (.htaccess or via PHP).
- Multiple security features (some of them require an Apache web server).
- Prepared to run automated git deployments.
- No (maybe sometimes breaking) external dependencies (I know they are useful, but also often risky).
- Developed to make it extremely easy for you to remove features or add your own things. In the end, it is just a feature-rich boilerplate. Feel free to adjust it to your needs.
Limitations
Such a project is never finished.
Still, it is absolutely ready for production use.
Talking about limitations, the maybe only big one is the size of your project.
Theoretically, you can build almost anything on top of it. But you shouldn’t!
One important feature is getting rid of code structure complexity (e.g. clean MVC, dependency injections, …). This complexity, however, is necessary when scaling development — like handing it over to other developers (or a client), working on it as a team, etc.
So, if you are using it for microsites (as the name implies) or a first MVP of your product, it is really awesome! But it is definitely not thought to be the base of the next Facebook.
Let’s build!
Discover the demo page and get the source code from GitHub.
I would love to hear your feedback.
Any kind of contribution (it’s Open Source) is, of course, appreciated.
Enjoy!
→ Demo page.
