Context
This project was built for my family pizzeria, Darius Pizza, where I was also working at the time. The goal was simple and concrete: create an online presence that makes the restaurant easier to discover, clearly displays the menu and opening hours, and reduces customer questions.
This was my first real development project, built solo and deployed to production. It marks the starting point of my journey into web development.
Objectives
- Improve local visibility and basic SEO
- Display the pizza menu in a clear and accessible way
- Allow updates without touching the code
- Keep a simple stack that is inexpensive to host
Public Website
The public site favored clarity and usefulness over visual complexity.
Key elements:
- Homepage with current opening hours and temporary messages
- Menu page powered by an external product CMS and internal back-office
- Contact page with map, phone number, and form
- Photo gallery to showcase the restaurant and products
The site has been live since 2021 and used daily by real customers.
Menu and Product Management
Rather than building a custom product system, I integrated ReflowHQ to manage the pizza list.
This allowed:
- Easy updates (names, prices, categories)
- Search and filtering without custom backend logic
- A clear separation between content and site code
This decision was driven by pragmatism: fast delivery and reduced maintenance.
Lightweight Back-Office
To avoid constant developer intervention, I built a minimal back-office in PHP.
It allows:
- Editing opening hours and exceptional closures
- Displaying temporary messages on the homepage
- Updating gallery images and their visibility
- Managing social media integrations
Authentication is intentionally simple, suited to a small number of trusted users.
Technical Overview
- Backend: PHP
- Frontend: HTML, CSS, minimal JavaScript
- Database: MySQL (gallery management)
- Product CMS: ReflowHQ
- Hosting: classic PHP hosting
The architecture is intentionally simple: server-rendered pages, JSON configuration files for dynamic content, and a small MySQL database where persistence was needed.
Constraints and Tradeoffs
- No framework, by choice — the goal was to learn the fundamentals
- Basic security, suited to low-risk private admin use
- SEO focused on essentials (metadata, structure, content clarity)
- French-only, targeting a strictly local audience
These constraints were realistic for the project context and timeline.
What I Learned
This project taught me more than any tutorial:
- How real users interact with a site
- How content evolves over time
- Why maintainability matters, even on small projects
- The importance of pragmatic technical decisions
It also clarified what I wanted to improve later — which led to a complete rewrite with a modern stack.
Takeaway
The Darius Pizza site is not perfect, but it worked — and still does. It was a hands-on introduction to deployment, maintenance, and responsibility for a production system used by real people.
It laid the foundation for everything that followed.
