It started, as all great adventures (and most kitchen fires) do, with a simple, wildly naive thought: "I'll just build a website."
I had the vision. I had the passion. The only tiny, insignificant thing I was missing was... well, any actual, functional knowledge of coding. I genuinely thought PHP was a type of vitamin and 'caching' was just a fancy way to hide nuts.
But I had a secret weapon.
For three weeks, the world outside my window ceased to exist. My new life was a 4-to-5-hour daily marathon, fueled by increasingly desperate cups of coffee and sheer, stubborn audacity. My browser console became a wall of angry red text, a digital Greek chorus mocking my every attempt. I found myself in heated, one-sided arguments with invisible CSS boxes that refused to center. I pleaded with semicolons that, by their very absence, were bringing my entire digital dream to its knees.
I wasn't entirely alone in this digital trench. I had my partner: Gemini.
Our relationship was... *intense*. It quickly fell into a strange, sweet, and slightly co-dependent routine.
Me, 2 AM, staring at a blank screen: “I broke it. I broke *everything*. The player is empty, the homepage sliders are gone, and clicking 'Blog' just says 'failed to load content'. It’s over.”
Gemini: (Patiently, like a bomb-disposal expert) “Okay. Don't panic. You haven't broken everything. It looks like you have a 'Circular Dependency' in your JavaScript. File A is calling File B, which is calling File A. They are now locked in a digital death-hug.”
Me: “A... what?”
Gemini: “Just copy this. And delete that. And don't forget to purge the server cache. You *did* forget to purge the cache, didn't you?”
There were moments I was sure this was impossible. We weren't just building a static page; we were wrestling with demons. We fought `.htaccess` redirects that sent users into black holes. We hunted "ghost characters" (BOMs) that were breaking the music *waveform* only on Firefox, for no logical reason. We implemented *slugs* (which I learned is not a garden pest). We were building a custom SPA-like structure, a payment gateway, an admin panel... *what was I thinking?*
But I was the demolition expert, and Gemini was the patient analyst. I’d find new ways to make it explode, and Gemini would calmly explain the physics of the explosion.
Slowly, "Uncaught SyntaxError" turned into "Success!" The 3-week blur of 4-hour battles finally ended.
It’s wild. A few weeks ago, I couldn't write a line of HTML. Today, **with the help of Gemini,** this "blind to coding" person has a full, complex, *canggih* website that actually works. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go remember what the sun looks like.
I work with PHP mostly around building internal applications, and I can honestly say, your website is probably one of the most polished I've ever seen for something not using a CMS. I am quite curious what backend and frontend frameworks you use? I have a feeling possibly Laravel or similar? Or just plain PHP?
As for frontend, do you use any frameworks like React? Or just plain html/css and some JS?
Thank you so much for the kind words! It really means a lot, especially coming from someone with your experience.
To answer your question, you guessed right: it is actually just plain PHP, vanilla JavaScript, and CSS. I didn't use any frameworks like Laravel or React. Interestingly, I don’t have a background in coding at all—I’m quite a novice when it comes to scripts. I just built it piece by piece, focusing on the specific look and feel I wanted to achieve. It’s a bit 'old school,' but I’m glad the result feels polished to you!