AutoPulse — Car Information & Automotive Blog Website

A complete, production-ready US-market automotive portal built with pure PHP 8 + MySQL + vanilla JS — no frameworks, no Composer, no Node.js. Deployable directly to InfinityFree (or any Apache shared hosting).

US audience by default: USD pricing (MSRP + destination), MPG / mph / 0–60 / inches / lbs units, US-market models (Camry, RAV4, F-150, Mustang, Tahoe, Grand Cherokee, Model 3, Civic Si, GTI, Tiguan…), America/New_York timezone and American contact/legal content (incl. CCPA-aware privacy page).

Deploy to InfinityFree in 5 steps

1. Database — InfinityFree client area → MySQL Databases → create one, then open phpMyAdmin and import sql/database.sql
2. Upload — FileZilla (host ftpupload.net, port 21) → upload everything in this folder into /htdocs
3. Configure — edit config/config.php on the server: set APP_ENV to 'production' and your DB host/name/user/password
4. HTTPS — enable the free SSL certificate, then uncomment the Force-HTTPS block at the bottom of .htaccess
5. Log in — https://yoursite.com/admin/login.php → change the passwords immediately and set SEO → Canonical site URL

Full details: DEPLOYMENT.md.

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Features

Public site

• Homepage with admin-manageable sections (order, visibility, custom headings)
• Car database: specifications, prices, features, pros/cons, galleries, FAQs
• Car detail pages with grouped spec tables, JSON-LD structured data
• Brands hub + brand pages (logo, description, models, related articles)
• Blog with categories, tags, TOC, reading time, share buttons, moderated comments
• Live AJAX search (debounced, keyboard-navigable suggestions) across cars/articles/brands
• Car comparison tool (up to 3 cars, differences auto-highlighted, mobile-friendly)
• CMS pages (About, Privacy, Terms, Disclaimer — editable)
• Contact form (AJAX, spam-protected, admin inbox)
• Dark/light mode, fully responsive (mobile-first), reduced-motion support

Admin panel (/admin)

• Dashboard with stats, recent activity, quick actions, system info
• Articles: create/edit/publish/schedule/duplicate/feature, tags, FAQ builder, SEO
• Cars: tabbed editor (General / Specs / Features / Images / SEO), galleries, categories
• Brands, categories & tags, CMS pages, navigation menus
• Media manager with multi-upload, validation, auto-resize, reuse & picker
• Comment moderation, contact inbox, newsletter list
• Ad slots (8 positions) — paste AdSense code once, toggle per slot
• SEO center: defaults, verification codes, redirects, dynamic sitemap/robots
• Site settings: logo/favicon/hero, contact, social, footer, custom CSS/JS, maintenance mode
• Users & roles (admin / editor), database backup (.sql export), cache controls

Security: PDO prepared statements everywhere, CSRF tokens on every form & API, password hashing, login rate limiting, session hardening, upload MIME/extension validation, XSS escaping, directory protection via .htaccess.

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Project structure

├── index.php              Front controller / router
├── .htaccess              Rewrites, security, compression, caching
├── robots.php             Dynamic robots.txt  (served as /robots.txt)
├── sitemap.php            Dynamic sitemap     (served as /sitemap.xml)
├── router-dev.php         Optional router for `php -S` local testing
├── config/                config.php · database.php   ← the ONLY place with DB credentials
├── includes/              functions · models · auth · seo · header/footer · cards · pagination · breadcrumbs · ads
├── pages/                 Front-end templates (home, cars, car, articles, article, brands, brand,
│                          category, search, compare, contact, page, 404, 503, 500)
├── api/                   JSON endpoints: search · cars · compare · contact · comments · newsletter
├── admin/                 Admin panel (18 screens + shared layout)
├── assets/                css/main.css · css/admin.css · js/main.js · js/admin.js · images/
├── uploads/               cars · articles · general · media  (PHP execution blocked)
├── cache/                 File cache (settings, menus, sitemap) — web access denied
└── sql/database.sql       Full schema + demo data

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Local setup (XAMPP / WAMP / Laragon)

1. Copy the project into your web root (e.g. C:\xampp\htdocs\autopulse).
2. Create a database (e.g. autopulse) in phpMyAdmin and import sql/database.sql.
3. Edit config/config.php:

   define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
   define('DB_NAME', 'autopulse');
   define('DB_USER', 'root');
   define('DB_PASS', '');

4. Open http://localhost/autopulse.

No Apache? Use PHP's built-in server from the project folder:

php -S localhost:8000 router-dev.php

Default admin credentials ⚠️

URL	Username	Password
/admin/login.php	admin	Admin@123
/admin/login.php	editor	Editor@123

Change these immediately after first login (Admin → Users). Demo prices/content are sample data — replace with your own.

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Deployment

See DEPLOYMENT.md for the full InfinityFree step-by-step guide and the final production checklist.

Notes

• Article/page content is admin-authored HTML (trusted) — everything user-generated (comments, contact) is escaped.
• Scheduled articles go live automatically when their publish time passes (no cron needed).
• The file cache (/cache) speeds up settings, menus, ads and the sitemap; clear it from Admin → Backup.
• Images larger than 1920 px are auto-downscaled on upload when PHP-GD is available (InfinityFree has it).