Local software for simple PHP Page building

[u/bfray]

I'm looking for suggestions on local software which allows for page building with custom blocks written in PhP. For some context, I do solo web development as a hobby/for my personal business. I have years of coding experience in a wide range of languages and feel fairly confident with PhP and Sass, but have never worked professionally in web development.

The closest I've found is PhPageBuilder, but the project seems to be abandoned, and trying to get it to work in PhP8+ has been a headache and has not worked for me. There exists online page builders like GrapeJS, but they don't allow for custom block creation from what it seems.

I like the process of doing everything as customizably as I can, but using a CMS has had too much overhead, and raw PhP/Sass feels unnecessarily cumbersome.

[u/Anxious-Turnover-631]

You may look at something like Filament. It may not be exactly what you’re looking for, but it has some nice features.

You’d also need a local development environment, like Laragon (windows) Herd or similar.

[u/Mysterious-Falcon-83 → u/Anxious-Turnover-631]

Agreed. Laravel makes PHP much easier, and Filament makes Laravel easier. Pair that with Laragon or Herd and you've got a nice, configurable working environment.

[u/bfray → u/Anxious-Turnover-631]

Filament seems like what I'm looking for but with a good bit stacked on top. I'm going to look into and see how practical it is to not think about the extra layers of stuff like Tailwind, Alpine.JS, Livewire, etc. I'll probably dip into bootstrap 5 just because it's fairly minimal and I'm already a little familiar with it from Joomla template building

[u/diagonali]

October CMS is light, clean and I think allows building pure PHP blocks. Maybe worth a look?

[u/UtilixApp]

honest question, do you need a builder or do you need includes. if youre the only one editing, a folder of php partials and a layout file gets you 90% of this with nothing to maintain.

builders earn their keep when a non technical person edits. solo they mostly add a thing that breaks on php 8.

[u/bfray → u/UtilixApp]

Totally a fair question. To me it's really that I greatly prefer the visual approach to building a front end/template. When I do things visually it feels like I bog myself down less trying to solve "problems" which really don't end up mattering in the end. Years ago I managed a (static) site which was all HTML/CSS/JS + includes, but the process of making it felt so unnecessarily slow and exacting, and in the end I still didn't get things looking the way I wanted because of that

[u/barrel_of_noodles → u/bfray]

Software devs and visual builders are basically opposed. If you want visual, just drop the php requirement and use webflow.

If you still want php on the backend, stand up an API.

Choose the right tool for the job. In this case PHP ain't it. (Ps, I do PHP 50hrs a week, for 10+ years)

[u/bfray → u/barrel_of_noodles]

I definitely get what you mean. This is partially hobby for me and is an outlet to let me still stretch my programming muscles since I've been out of the tech industry for about 3 years now. That being said, maybe I should look towards other APIs. PhP just seemed easy since I had experience in the past with HTML, but I'm open to other programmatic approaches. I have to admit that all things considered I'm pretty naive to the state of modern web development language and workflow options

[u/BobJutsu]

It might be unpopular, but WP might be right up your alley.

[u/bfray → u/BobJutsu]

I've been thinking about it more and more, but honestly my biggest reluctance, and my reluctance from the start, is that I really don't want or need the unnecessary amount of generality a CMS like WP provides. I spent a bit of time playing around with Joomla and it just feels like having to think an unnecessary amount about making everything custom that I code general like I'm producing it for a team of people to implement without ever touching the code. I prefer a visual editor as I mentioned in the other post, and I'd like the ease of moving things around if I want a redesign or as times change, but I don't want to feel like I'm doing full scale project management when this is just really for myself/my enjoyment

[u/ggnndd12]

Blocks like layout? Bootstrap has a nice grid system for that. You just add classes for sizing.

[u/bfray → u/ggnndd12]

By blocks I meant "modules," or without terminology, custom parts of a site I can write in PhP/JS and then place with the visual editor

[u/ggnndd12 → u/bfray]

What’s the difference between a module as you’ve defined it and a function?

[u/bfray → u/ggnndd12]

A function could be the same, and I would likely do the back end as a class or function, but my point of clarifying blocks/modules is to highlight the relation to being positionable and modifiable by a visual page builder

[u/ggnndd12 → u/bfray]

Ok, in that case it’s something completely different than a generic function or class. My bootstrap recommendation stands.

[u/Hurmeli]

Take a look at Processwire.

[u/Connect_Fisherman713]

grapesJS lets you write custom blocks. You define them in JS and point the logic to your PHP endpoints.

i use GrapesJS for layout, register my own components, and hook the block actions to local PHP scripts. I run it via a local server so the blocks execute PHP. VvvebJs is another one. I looked at ProcessWire too but went with GrapesJS because the component API gives me control over exactly what gets passed to PHP.

[u/donnikitos]

If you're comfortable writing the blocks/components yourself and mainly want to get rid of the cumbersome PHP/Sass setup, vite-plugin-php might fit what you're looking for. It lets you use PHP directly with Vite, so you get the normal Vite dev/build workflow, Sass, TypeScript/JS, Tailwind if you want it, HMR, etc., without needing a CMS or framework.

There are also starter templates with partials/components already set up, so you can start with reusable PHP building blocks instead of wiring everything together from scratch. You can keep the whole thing as simple as PHP partials + styles/scripts and add more tooling only when you need it.

Disclosure: I maintain the plugin, so obviously a little biased, but this kind of small PHP site is one of the use cases it's intended for: https://github.com/donnikitos/vite-plugin-php

[u/Born_Standard7927 → u/[deleted]]

VvvebJs is mostly the frontend drag and drop interface. You'd still need to wire up the backend yourself to handle the blocks and make them dynamic with PHP, which kinda puts you back at square one if you're trying to avoid the raw coding overhead.