Because of *gestures wildly* everything going on in the WordPress landscape, I’ve started taking a look at the web development world outside of WordPress.
And I think I’ve fallen in love with Laravel.
I had heard about Laravel before, but never really had the time to dive into it since my main focus was with WordPress.
But over the past several months I’ve jumped head first into it, learning it through Laracasts and then creating a couple of small personal projects before using the framework to start building a custom content management system.
It’s reignited my passion for web development and reminded me of why I got into web dev in the first place.
So here’s what I’ve learned with Laravel the past couple of months.
There’s a Whole Other World Outside of WordPress
So I’ve been in the WordPress world practically since I started web development in 2012.
WordPress was my introduction to the content management system world, and I wanted to create a custom theme for an arena football blog I had created. So I took that summer to learn everything I could about web development.
And I liked it so much that after graduating college in 2016 with a journalism degree, I stayed in web development almost entirely focused on WordPress.
While it’s been great and helped me land my role as a web developer at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at For Worth,, I’ve just been stuck there my entire time.
I had heard about other web development things outside of WordPress, like Laravel, for a long time, but never had the time or opportunity to really dive into them.
But now that I’ve had the chance to explore, it’s incredible what’s out there and what I can build. I’m sure to any seasoned and well-rounded developer, it will come as no surprise.
Still, it’s got me really excited for what I can create (and man, have I been creating).
The Sky Can Be the Limit
While you can technically create anything you want in WordPress, there are still a lot of limitations. At the end of the day, it’s still a blogging platform after all.
There are decisions made many years ago that still have an impact on how you customize and develop with it today (looking at you wp_posts and wp_postmeta tables).
But Laravel doesn’t really have those same limitations.
I’ve found that it’s essentially a blank slate to create anything you want, whether that’s a simple dashboard app or complete content management system.
Now, admittedly, that freedom was a bit daunting at first. It was kind of nice to have a lot of the basic things, like routing, authentication, queries, etc., done for me with WordPress. And learning how to create those things on my own in Laravel was a bit of a learning curve, and still is.
But as I’ve worked through that curve and become more familiar and confident with creating in Laravel, I’m loving what I can do with it.
I’ve managed to build a personal dashboard app where I can track finances, GitLab projects and tasks, marketing tasks and events. I’ve also started creating a custom content management system.
I’ve learned that the sky really is the limit with Laravel.
It’s Easier and Harder Than It Looks
Also, I’ve also found that there are things that are both easier and harder than it might look.
On the easier side of the scale, adding items to the database along with validating them is super easy. Models and controllers are wonderful things for working with the database and keeping the code nice and organized.
Also, being able to use starter kits to bootstrap authentication out of the box is a godsend.
So far with my work on Digital Shopfront, a lot of things that I’ve thought would take me hours, if not days, to complete have been knocked out in under an hour.
But on the other hand, there have been some challenges as well.
Trying to integrate with Google OAuth for a calendar feature was so much of a challenge that I ended up creating a rudimentary calendar feature for myself instead.
And figuring out how Alpine and Livewire work has been a bit of a challenge, although now that I’m actually tinkering with it more, it’s starting to get a bit easier.
Plus, dealing with routes once they get complex took a while to get used to.
There Are a Lot of Great Tools
I’m also finding out that there are a lot of great tools out there that the community has created.
I’ve found Livewire absolutely amazing. I’ve only really started with the basics of it to add, edit and delete info as well as sort data table columns, but what I’ve tried so far has been pretty neat. And I’m excited to see how far I can push it.
Also, I’ve been using the Eventy package from Tor Morten Jensen to be able to use action and filter hooks like I can in WordPress (basically the biggest thing I miss about WordPress). It’s saved me a lot of time trying to figure out how to do it on my own.
Plus, with Laravel 12 now out, I’m taking a look at Laravel Shift and how it can help me manage keeping Digital Shopfront up-to-date with the latest version of Laravel.
And it seems like every day I’m coming across a new interesting package from the community that I’m wondering how I can incorporate it into a project.
Web Design and Development is Fun
Most importantly, I’m having so much fun with web development again.
I’ve rediscovered the joy I felt in the summer of 2012 when I learned web development and how to develop WordPress plugins and themes.
I’m excited to learn how to do different things with Laravel. Laracasts is quite literally a godsend, and heaven knows how much time I’ve spent there watching a lot of courses on how to do cool things with the framework.
Building with Laravel hasn’t been easy, but I’ve fallen back in love with fighting through the different challenges and pushing the boundaries of what I can do.
Laravel has made web development fun for me again, and I love that.
