CarFlip LK is a full-featured vehicle marketplace web application designed to connect vehicle dealers and individual sellers with potential buyers in a trusted, scalable, and user-friendly environment.
The platform allows users to list vehicles, promote them using paid advertisement plans, communicate via real-time chat, and verify sellers to improve buyer trust. all while being optimized for performance and affordability in the Sri Lankan market.
This project was built as a custom PHP web application without using any major backend frameworks, focusing on performance, flexibility, and full control over the system architecture.
1. User registration & role-based access (Admin / Dealer / User).
2. Vehicle listing creation and management.
3. Media uploads (images & videos).
4. Listing insights (views, clicks, bookmarks, shares).
5. Featured listings and paid advertisements.
6. Seller verification workflow.
7. Real-time chat between buyers and dealers.
8. Reporting system for suspicious listings.
9. Multilingual support (English, Sinhala, Tamil).
10. Admin moderation & content management.
11. Homepage hero slider management.
12. Notification system.
The idea for CarFlip LK originated from observing how buyers struggle to trust listings and how sellers are forced to overpay for visibility on existing platforms.
Instead of building a generic classifieds website, the goal was to design a trust-first vehicle marketplace, where:
- Sellers can prove legitimacy.
- Buyers can communicate instantly.
- Promotions are transparent and fairly priced.
The biggest challenge was building everything without a framework, which required:
- Careful database normalization.
- Secure authentication handling.
- Custom real-time chat logic.
- Manual CI/CD deployment planning.
Despite these challenges, this approach resulted in a lean, fast, and highly customizable system.
