Corplify — Case Study

PHP & MySQL B2B Full-Stack Build

The Challenge

Corplify, a digital corporate secretary, needed a portal WordPress was never built to run.

A multi-step application workflow tied to payment and admin review, not a marketing site

No manpower to force WordPress and plugins to fit the workflow

A custom PHP/MySQL build beat no-code and low-code on both speed and cost

Role

Freelance full-stack developer

Tools

PHP, MySQL, Stripe, Claude

Outcome

Shipped and live in production at corplify.my

The Build

End-to-end portal covering the full customer journey.

Signup and login with OTP email verification and optional 2FA

5-step company registration with autosaving drafts and step restore

SSM company-name search, fuzzy-matched against a live registry of real registrations

Application review, status tracking, bulk CSV updates, Excel export

Automated status emails and a live chat widget with human escalation

11 service landing pages and an article hub, each with its own title, meta description, and canonical

The Trade-off

Vanilla PHP, deliberately.

No framework No dependencies Clean handover

No framework, no third-party dependency manager. A conscious call for full control and a clean handover, not a hosting limitation. Fewer moving parts to maintain, nothing to upgrade later, and easy to pass to another developer with no framework knowledge required.

Excel export

Hand-built XML SpreadsheetML instead of a heavier spreadsheet library. Works anywhere, nothing to install.

Debugging under a live schema

Several production bugs traced back to the same root cause: code assuming database columns that had not been migrated yet, or reading data that had moved tables.

Draft-save failing silently

insert attempted columns that did not exist yet on unmigrated databases

Applications reopening on step 1

step number was saved before the step counter updated

Admin document viewer breaking

read a path column that had been replaced by a proper documents table

Outcomes

MEASURED

Live and in production at corplify.my.

NOT YET MEASURED

No confirmed customer volume or conversion data yet.

REFLECTION

Shipping solo meant every call, and every fix, was mine. Vanilla PHP kept the surface small enough to hand over; the bugs taught me the rest: version the schema alongside the features, not behind them.

View Live Site

What’s Next?

Phase 2 — Product surface

Multi-language support (English / Chinese / Malay), mobile optimization, and expanded login options. Prioritized first because these affect whether current traffic converts, before spending on new traffic.

Phase 3 — Reach

Physical and digital marketing to build the customer base the product is now ready to support.