Hi there, thanks for the kind words! When I started to learn to code, I was overwhelmed with the amount of frameworks. I think I spent about a year just trying to decide which one to use. Then once I dived into the documentation & tutorials, I was also overwhelmed and confused on how things worked. At that point, I decided I'd rather just try to build something in a way I understand that's simple, then spend another year banging my head.
So I just used basic PHP to build each feature one by one. I wrote out the user flow: Register > Login > Post Recipe > View Feed > View Recipe > Search. Then just tackled them one day at a time. When I looked at existing user authentication systems, there were so many features/options that my head spun. Maybe Im naiive, but I didnt think I needed all of them. I just wanted to put an email + pw + username in a database. Then send an email(with randomly generated code) to activate the account. Then made a Login page with simple sql query to validate email + pw was correct. It seems too simple to work, but if there's any problems Ill just deal with it later. Im actually thinking of removing pw altogether and just going with magiclink.
Basically, what Im trying to say is, just make it the way it makes sense in your mind, in the simplest way. Otherwise, youll be waiting forever before you build something real. Just like everything else in life, things are overcomplicated. Were just making websites arent we? Whether its PHP or Ruby or JS or xyz framework, it all just spits out html. Hope this helps!