Charymeld — Developer Portfolio & Project Showcase

Building without a framework: Every feature — routing, auth, CSRF protection, file uploads, AJAX endpoints — was implemented from scratch using plain PHP and PDO. This kept the codebase lean and demonstrated low-level mastery rather than reliance on abstraction.

Dynamic stats without over-engineering: The Years Experience stat auto-increments every year by computing the difference between the current year and the career start year (2022) at render time. The Projects Shipped count is a live COUNT(*) from the database — no manual updates ever needed.

Admin security without a framework: The admin panel uses session-based authentication with a bcrypt password hash, an auth guard included on every protected page, and FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS on all POST inputs to prevent XSS — security handled deliberately rather than delegated to a framework.