PHP Blog Management System

A complete Blog Management System built using PHP and MySQL, featuring user authentication, blog CRUD operations, dashboard management, and email notifications.
This project demonstrates real-world backend workflows commonly used in PHP-based web applications.

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🔧 Features

• User registration and login
• Secure session-based authentication
• Blog creation, update, and deletion
• Dashboard for managing blogs
• Email notification using PHPMailer
• File upload support
• Database-driven application

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🛠 Technologies Used

• PHP
• MySQL
• PHPMailer
• Composer
• HTML
• CSS
• Bootstrap
• XAMPP (Local Development)

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📂 Project Structure (Key Files)

• index.php – Homepage / Blog listing
• register.php – User registration
• login.php – User authentication
• dashboard.php – User dashboard
• createBlog.php – Create blog post
• updateBlog.php – Update blog post
• deleteBlog.php – Delete blog post
• database.php – Database connection
• process.php – Email processing
• vendor/ – Composer dependencies

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🔐 Authentication & Sessions

📝 User Registration (Sample Code)

if (isset($_POST['register'])) {
    $name  = $_POST['fullname'];
    $email = $_POST['email'];
    $pass  = password_hash($_POST['password'], PASSWORD_DEFAULT);

    $query = "INSERT INTO users (fullname, email, password) VALUES ('$name', '$email', '$pass')";
    mysqli_query($conn, $query);
}

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🔑 User Login with Session

session_start();

if (password_verify($password, $user['password'])) {
    $_SESSION['id'] = $user['id'];
    $_SESSION['email'] = $user['email'];
    header("Location: dashboard.php");
    exit;
}

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📊 Dashboard Access Control

session_start();

if (!isset($_SESSION['id'])) {
    header("Location: login.php");
    exit;
}

✔ Ensures only authenticated users can access the dashboard.

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✏️ Update Blog

$query = "DELETE FROM blogs WHERE id='$id'";
mysqli_query($conn, $query);

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❌ Delete Blog

$query = "DELETE FROM blogs WHERE id='$id'";
mysqli_query($conn, $query);

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📧 Email Notification (PHPMailer)

PHPMailer is installed using Composer.

composer require phpmailer/phpmailer

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Sample Email Sending Code

PHPMailer is installed using Composer.

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

require "vendor/autoload.php";

$mail = new PHPMailer(true);

$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'your_email@gmail.com';
$mail->Password = 'your_app_password';
$mail->SMTPSecure = PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_STARTTLS;
$mail->Port = 587;

$mail->setFrom('test@test.com', 'Blog System');
$mail->addAddress($email);
$mail->Subject = 'Blog Notification';
$mail->Body = 'Your blog has been published successfully';

$mail->send();

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📚 Learning Outcomes

• Building authentication systems in PHP
• Session management and access control
• CRUD operations with MySQL
• Integrating PHPMailer using Composer
• Structuring a real-world PHP project
• Writing maintainable backend logic

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📌 Notes

• This project is built for learning and practice purposes
• Uses local SMTP configuration for testing
• Can be improved by:
  • Using prepared statements (SQL Injection prevention)
  • Adding role-based access
  • Implementing pagination
  • Adding .env configuration for credentials

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🚀 Future Improvements

• PDO implementation
• Admin role management
• Comment system
• Email verification on registration
• Password reset functionality