Front end developer moving to Laravel

I’ve been doing front end for a quite a while, I decided to back into server side development.  I’ve work a lot in the past in WordPress building and writing my own themes and plugins for my WordPress projects.  But they’re is no better feeling than building your own application from the ground up.

After doing some reading around where best to start.  I was recommend to learn using a framework it was a toss up between using Phalcon and Laravel.  In the end I decided to go with Laravel. Below are my thoughts on a front end developer using Laravel.

Come of Wamp

There’s is nothing wrong with working on Wamp for building WordPress or basic sites.  But it does have it limitations when you start using laravel.  For starters Laravel uses the MCrypt extension while it is possible to install this on Wamp but you will run into other problems.  What I recommend is looking at Vagrant.

Vagrant makes it easy to build a server to mirror your live environment if you use homestead to do this the process is even easier.  I recommend going the route of building the server yourself it’s much more challenging but you learn loads in the process.

• Servers for Hackers – Vagrant and Apache
• phpacademy – Getting Started With Vagrant
• Laracasts – Introducing Laravel Homestead

Sign up to Laracasts

Laracasts is the goto place for Laravel and to be honest modern PHP development.  The membership is worth it’s weight in gold.  It’s ran by Jeffery Way formerly from Nettuts and Tutsplus.  They cover aspects in Laravel from Caching to working with Facades.  From building a simple todo list app to building a Facebook style site.

All the tutorials are screencast so you can watch what they do and work at your pace.  It also has a thriving Laravel forum.

Laracasts

Build something

Its all great doing tutorials, what I find the best way to learn is to build something.  You can get hosting and domain for very little these days. With a heart internet and digital ocean combo.

Motivational Monday. I started off building a basic crud app.  I then built it up to have its own admin area Then added an ability schedule posts.  I’m currently working on the ability to allow the application to post a tweet to twitter.

Hope this gave any Front End dev’s, some advice in building your own Laravel applications.