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Cover image for Showdev: I built a Completly Free and ultra-lightweight (0.8MB) PWA Digital Business Card platform in pure PHP & Vanilla JS
Marco Pellegrini
Marco Pellegrini

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Showdev: I built a Completly Free and ultra-lightweight (0.8MB) PWA Digital Business Card platform in pure PHP & Vanilla JS

#business #webdev #php #marketing

Hi dev community! 👋

I wanted to challenge myself to build a digital networking tool that is as lightweight, fast, and clean as possible. The result is MyBusinessCard.digital, an independent platform to create digital business cards.

To keep it extremely fast, I built the entire stack using pure PHP, Vanilla JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap—no heavy frameworks, no bloated external libraries. Thanks to native image compression, a complete user profile takes up less than 0.8 MB on the server.

Core Features & Architecture

  • 100% Free: No hidden paywalls, no premium tiers, and no platform watermarks or ads on your card.
  • Custom Slug: Secure your personalized URL permanently (e.g., mybusinesscard.digital/yourname).
  • Native PWA: The system dynamically generates a Progressive Web App. Recipients can save your card directly to their smartphone home screen after just 4 seconds of scrolling.
  • Privacy-First & No Tracker Cookies: Zero profiling or tracking cookies. Users can fully test the advanced dashboard in Guest Mode without leaving an email. Guest data is permanently wiped via a 12-hour cronjob to keep the infrastructure clean.
  • Global Accessibility: Fully localized in 15 languages (including Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Turkish, Polish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and major European languages) adapting automatically to the smartphone's system language.

36-Second Video Demo

Here is a quick look at how the interactive two-column dashboard works:

Templates Preview

Since I implemented a 3-state live validation for the slug and a real-time live preview iframe on the desktop dashboard, here is how the interface and some of the 12 ready-to-use models look:

Three digital business card templates showing colorful interfaces on smartphone screens

Three alternative digital business card designs with clean and dark custom themes

🛠️ Live Validation & Backend Security

The signup form features live availability checks for the slug (letters, numbers, and -, minimum 3 characters) and blocks international trademark names to avoid future infringement issues. The backend has also been tested with OWASP ZAP against injection vulnerabilities.

The project is fully live and open for testing here:
Try the Dashboard instantly in Guest Mode (No signup required)

I would love to get your feedback, technical advice, or thoughts on the architecture. Let me know what you think!

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