La Maison Élégante — Restaurant Website & Reservations

Overview

La Maison Élégante needed a website that did more than list a menu — a working reservation system and a way for staff to manage bookings without hiring a developer for every change. I built the whole thing from scratch.

The Challenge

The client's budget ruled out expensive managed hosting or a heavyweight framework with its own hosting requirements. The site needed to run comfortably on cheap shared hosting while still handling real reservation logic — availability, table capacity, and confirmations — reliably.

What I Built

I deliberately built the site in core PHP with a MySQL backend rather than reaching for a framework, keeping the dependency footprint small enough to run on inexpensive shared hosting without compromise. That included the public-facing site and booking flow, plus a custom admin panel so staff can view, confirm, and manage reservations without touching any code.

Outcome

A restaurant website that handles real bookings, costs very little to host, and that staff can operate without developer involvement for day-to-day use.

Tech Stack