On one of our websites we are currently using Google maps with thousands of markers across the globe which can be clicked with a new page opening. The lat longs are inside a mysql db.
I trust this can be done with OSM as well and I would appreciate a link or two to learn how we can implement this.
Holy Guacamole! https://switch2osm.org/ rocks, I had no idea you can do all that with OSM!
Now I am positively dropping lesser projects, this worth the effort to look at in details.
For the OP - I build service stacks on top of Debian, I am not a coder or a UNIX root so this is not authoritative by any means. But https://switch2osm.org/ shows the typical way people with skills deal with issues - they create their own solutions, and two of them seldom ever alike but a lot of them are overwhelmingly excellent. I spent nearly 3 decades in GNU/Linux communities until LUG (Linux User Group) was no more.
For you I would recommend looking at the Joomla! / Fabrikar stack, you are going to find modules which interface OSM data in SQL stores. If you cannot find what you exactly need, it is going to be a whole lot cheaper to pay for customization by the expert group who created the “almost perfect” solution.