[codegeek]

Real hacky ? Get a server with LAMP/LEMP installed and then Plain old PHP file that may be writes to a sql database and boom, you are up and running on a web host by uploading index.php to the server root.

I would advise using something like Symfony to add a bit more structure like routing etc.

Need more magic ? Go with a tested framework like Laravel etc. If PHP is not your thing, you can use Python/Node whatever you are comfortable with but some of those languages have different server setup that is sometimes not as easy as LEMP/LAMP. And no, we don't want to introduce things like docker etc.

[MrDvs]

As an alternative to Laravel you can also use Lumen, it works the same but more lightweight.