Logins and roles
Staff and clients on separate paths. Least privilege, not one shared admin.
Case study
Custom PHP portal for a live practice.
A practitioner business needed logins, roles, reports, invoices and a client area. A normal WordPress theme would have been a pile of plugins. This was a PHP and MariaDB app instead.
PHP
Custom application
MariaDB
Real data, not pages
Auth
Staff and client roles
Overview
The job
The public marketing site and the working product were different problems. Clients needed to sign in, see reports, pay invoices and book around a real workflow. Staff needed a dashboard that did not pretend to be a blog.
I built a custom PHP app with MariaDB, session auth, a client portal and a staff side. Hosting, backups and ongoing changes sit with the same codebase.
Details
What shipped
The pieces a portal actually needs.
Client area
Reports, invoices, messages and the jobs that belong to that person.
Staff tools
Dashboards, records and the unglamorous admin that keeps a practice moving.
Payments
Card payments wired to invoices, with webhooks that only mark paid when the provider says paid.
In practice
Why not WordPress
WordPress is excellent for pages you edit. It is a poor database application once you have roles, files, payments and a workflow that is not “a post”.
This build used PHP 8, MariaDB, nginx, and a portal you can actually support. I still use WordPress when the job is a marketing site.
Outcomes
What this proves
Custom PHP is in production
Not a tutorial.
Auth and payments are boring on purpose
The same person can host and change it
Scope was written first
Want a quick answer first?
Send a short note about the project. I will reply with fit, rough cost and next steps.
Process
How it ran
Same studio process as a brochure site, heavier engineering.
Workflow
Who logs in, what they must see, what must never leak.
Architecture
PHP app, MariaDB, file storage, mail, payments.
Build
Staff and client surfaces, then hardening.
Care
Updates, backups and the next feature as a quoted change.
Fit
Who this is for
A good fit if you…
- You have a workflow WordPress plugins keep fighting
- Logins, files, invoices or internal tools
- You want one developer who will still answer next year
Not the right fit if you…
- A five-page brochure that should just be WordPress
- An enterprise programme needing a team of ten
FAQ
Questions
Can I see a public login?
No. It is a private product. This page describes the type of build, not private client data.
Do you only build portals?
No. Most jobs are still WordPress or WooCommerce. Portals are for when those are the wrong tool.
Who hosts it?
I can host and care for it, or hand over a documented deploy.
Explore more
Related
Keep going with related services, free diagnostic tools and studio pages — practical next steps for SEO, hosting and builds.
Need a portal rather than a theme?
Describe the workflow. I will say whether custom PHP is justified.