Corporate website on PHP MySQL

A corporate website on PHP MySQL is a company showcase: services, cases, blog or news, request forms, and sometimes a simple client account area. It gives control over code and hosting without being tied to a WordPress theme. For many companies, this is enough to cover branded search and ad leads without buying a heavy ecommerce platform.

Related manuals: turnkey development, landing page, multilingual site, white label if the corporate site is only a wrapper around a platform.

Section set

• Home page with a clear offer and CTA.
• Services/products as separate pages, not one paragraph.
• About company, team if needed.
• Cases or projects.
• News/blog for SEO and PR.
• Contacts, map, company details.
• Content admin panel for editors.

Do not drag a shop, forum, and billing account into v1 "for the future". When it grows, you will add it. Right now, speed and clarity matter more.

CMS and roles

An editor updates services and news. An admin manages users and forms. A developer should not be needed to change the phone number in the footer. Fields and publication statuses for news, draft/published, are the minimum. A media library with sane file names helps find the logo a year later.

Requests and integrations

Forms: request, callback, job application. Anti-spam, email to manager, auto-reply to the client. CRM integration should be added when ready, not used as a launch blocker. Log send errors: "the form does not work" without logs is treated by guessing.

SEO framework

Friendly URLs for services, unique titles, sitemap, blog with normal dates, and interlinking between services. Technical SEO at handoff plus a content plan after. Corporate sites often lose not because of PHP, but because service pages say "text coming soon".

If there are several languages, plan hreflang and URL structure immediately; see the multilingual manual. Adding a second language a year later is more painful.

Design and brand

A corporate site can be calm, but not anonymous. Logo, color, typography, and consistent spacing. Stock "handshake" banners without company identity are outdated. Real office or product photos, or careful graphics, are better than clip art.

Acceptance checklist

1. The sitemap matches the approved structure.
2. Services open, breadcrumb nesting is correct.
3. A news item is created in the admin panel and appears in the feed.
4. Forms are delivered.
5. The mobile header does not break.
6. 404 and SSL are correct.

Support after launch

Who changes texts, who makes backups, who updates PHP. A small corporate website dies when access is lost and the only developer is unavailable. Handoff documentation and backups are part of delivery, not "we will add it later".

If in six months the site needs an account area or a shop, evaluate whether a ready Microscript product covers it instead of endlessly growing a custom monolith.

Services as landing pages

Every important service needs its own URL with real text, a "how we work" block, CTA, and links to cases. A general "services list" page without detail converts poorly and ranks poorly. Still, do not create dozens of nearly empty pages for keywords; fewer substantial pages are better.

Cases with task, process, and result work better than a gallery of client logos with no explanation. If NDA applies, describe the case anonymously. A blog does not need daily posts; occasional useful material beats a thin stream of rewrites.

Site-wide CTAs - phone, form, messenger - should be consistent. Different numbers in header and footer without reason look like copy-paste from an old site.

Security and routine

PHP updates, closing unused admin users, strong passwords, scheduled backups, HTTPS. Corporate sites are rarely attacked "like a bank", but forms and admin panels get hammered often. Captcha and send-rate limits are mandatory.

Once a quarter, check whether forms still arrive, the certificate is not expiring, the disk is not full of mail backups, and service pages do not return 500 after hosting updates. A short checklist for the responsible employee is better than the myth that "the site works by itself".

If a client account area with payments becomes necessary, stop and compare custom development with a ready product from the catalog. Sometimes it is cheaper to place a script next to the corporate site than turn it into half billing.

Team and update process

Who publishes news, who answers requests, who changes service prices. Without roles, the site freezes after launch, and six months later sales is ashamed to share the link. Keep a simple calendar: monthly contact and service relevance check.

Keep service-page templates consistent so a new product can be added without a designer. Free-form redrawing of every section kills timelines. Exceptions are the home page and key ad landing pages.

Plan multilingual support immediately if entering another market is on the one-year plan. See multilingual website. Moving URL structure later costs more than an extra language field in the admin panel at the start.

Compare again with a landing page: a corporate site carries brand and service portfolio; a landing page tests one hypothesis. Having both is normal; replacing one with the other is not.

Migration from an old site

Keep a 301 redirect map from old service and news URLs. Losing rankings after "we just uploaded a new one" is common pain. Export content, check broken images, verify phone numbers. Do not turn off the old site on DNS switch day without a backup and redirect table.

Test redirects selectively before and after. Separately check that the new admin panel is not left on a default password and that staging robots settings did not reach production closed.

If the old site was on WordPress, do not carry all plugins "just in case". Move the meaning of sections, not a zoo of extensions.

Content plan without heroics

Finishing two service pages per month with proper text is more valuable than a daily rewrite blog. Assign a content owner inside the client company. A contractor can write the starter package, but the living site is fed by the people who sell the services every day. Once a quarter, remove or update outdated promotions and prices; dead numbers hurt trust more than no blog.

Compare phone numbers and messengers with offline materials: business cards, signage, ads. Channel mismatch is a common small issue after rebranding.

At final corporate-site acceptance, walk the checklist as an outside customer: find the advertised service in three clicks, submit a form, and receive a reasonable auto-reply. If you stumble, the market will too.