Since when I started dipping my toes into PHP by creating the Cassette Beasts fanlisting and subsequently my fanlisting collective, I have been using PHP's built-in web server to preview my PHP pages.
However, a major drawback of PHP's built-in web server for my PHP development was that when I used the web server to preview my fanlisting collective, the CSS stylesheet of my Cassette Beasts fanlisting will not get applied. Therefore, I have been searching for alternative development environment software for PHP. I tried out XAMPP, but it was not well-designed for developing multiple PHP projects; I even tried out Docker, which was overkill, especially since my back-end web development skills are not developed enough to be able to make use of Docker yet.
Finally, I discovered Laragon, which gave me what I needed: lightweight, fast, and easy to switch between different PHP projects. As a result, I finally decided to settle for Laragon for the development of Leilukin's Hub's PHP websites.
At long last, after spending almost a week on working on them, my fanlisting collective and my Cassette Beasts fanlisting are now live!
Furthermore, I have created and released my fork of BellaBuffs, the PHP fanlisting script, with PHPMailer integration!
Previously, I set up a contact form for my upcoming Cassette Beasts fanlisting with InfinityFree's PHPMailer contact form code. Now, I finally succeed in implementing PHPMailer into all the fanlisting's functions that involve sending out emails, such as emailing new members after they submit the join form and when they get approved, as well as emailing me when a new member applies to join the fanlisitng or when an existing member updates their member details.
Furthermore, I managed to add the rest of the features of BellaBuffs' contact form, such as spam detection, into the Cassette Beasts fanlisting's contact form as well.
Today I learned that InfinityFree's free hosting plan does not support the PHP mail() function, so an external email service is required to send email from an InfinityFree free plan website.
As a result, I ended up spending a lot of time in setting up a contact form for my upcoming Cassette Beasts fanlisting by using PHPMailer, based on a contact form page built with PHPMailer that is provided by InfinityFree. since I am new to PHP.