Best practices when taking a small project on your own [closed]

Question

I've always worked in small companies, mostly doing small websites, and they all sucked in project management.

That means I have no experience whatsoever (even though I learned a little bit studying on my own) about the best practices and tools when developing a project.

Currently I'm unemployed to finish college and I decided to take a small PHP project mostly to learn both the language and project management.
It's just an idea I had for a website, I don't need to get money from it and it is not big, so I'm not concerned with deadlines or business plan, or a main goal. The main goal is to learn the technical stuff.

The only thing I'm caring about is doing it right, you know, the best practices in PHP, server setup, security, the tools for the job.

I'm not asking for a complete rundown on any points, just things like

• Remember to always sanitize user input
• Use this tool to manage version
• Remember to set this apache option
• Here's a good link on how to organize your files

Things like these will be already of great help!
Thanks

Answer 1

Non language specific:

Devise an error handling strategy early. What will you do when error conditions occur, will you log errors, how? where? What information will you log? Will you throw exceptions, return error codes?

Assume that your website is succesful, people start using it, then it breaks how quickly can you figure out what went wrong? Consider your whole error strategy from that perspective, not just from what happens while you developing and you're in control.