Hello and welcome to the forums,

in regards for your question(s): It depends on what you want to reach. You could choose for sure also the basic guide and implement the elementary parts complete on your own. The reasoning is that frameworks like Spring tend to be just too much at a point and make the project in a whole bloated. Also you need to watch out for problems incoming with security issues on a regular base. The more frameworks you are using the more problems can arrive.

Yes, implementing all from scratch is a hard work. But giving you now any advice or tipp for alternatives would not fit in the perspective: You can for sure find possible ways with PHP as projects like Pixelfed are using for example Laravel. But is it fitting for real? Or is it making anything more "secure"? Is it helping for real?

My personal view onto this: The more websites and web-installations are getting different instead showing pure text and some images within the webbrowser the more problems we will get for sure, as developers and users both sides. Yes, sounds nice to show everything in the webbrowser. But remember: The webbrowser itself is a complex piece of software and growing. The websites being showed the same: The more functionalities and wished connections implemented same way. Reduction of complexity means also the reduction of possible security-issues. A final answer to be given? Not possible in the end as it is onto what you want to reach and what you decide for yourself. When our only answer for complex information is to build even more complex pieces of software we should rethink that. Implementing all from scratch with only what you think is needed sounds quite more fitting instead of using known frameworks as you will end up in being depending onto them completely.