I recently finished #100daysofcode where I focused on Laravel.
A few years ago I had a studied Ruby on Rails trying to get my first developer job so I already had a bit of experience with backend frameworks similar to Laravel. However, in the last 2-3 years, I was doing Node JS, express.
I decided I wanted to put all my focus into Laravel because
- I had really enjoyed my time when I studied RoR although ultimately, did not end up not getting a RoR job.
- I recently used Adonis JS for a practice project and I missed the structure of using Frameworks
- I also have experience with php and from doing my research Laravel seemed like the perfect framework for me.
My plan was to get the foundations down quickly then work on a bunch of practice projects. I purposely found tutorial projects focusing on building a saas as building a saas is something I want to do.
Laravel Master Course
I started with Laravel Master Course from @codingphase.
I'm very familiar with codingphase's teaching style and know he likes to get the point quickly and not waste time on information you will rarely need.
What I learned
This was a great course to start with and build a foundation. I learned all the basics from how Laravel is structured, where to put your controllers, routes, how to add authentication, eloquent, models, views, etc.
Projects
In this course, I built a simple blog and then a bigger project consuming data from the unsplash API and letting users save their favorite pictures in different "projects".
* If you want to check out codingphase's courses (he has a whole bunch), I'd appreciate it if you used my affiliate link at no extra cost to you.
Learn to Create Your own SAAS
Then I moved on to Learn to create your own saas course from @tnylea.
This was a course I had been wanting to take for a while. It had everything I wanted to learn which was creating a saas.
What I learned
The course was a truly top Notch course. Everything was nicely planned out, well explained, and very high quality.
Everything from using stripe, setting up a landing page, webhooks, authentication with OAuth, switching plans, cancellations, announcement, and hosting was covered.
Project
The project itself was creating a learning platform SAAS app. So users can sign up and create their own platform to launch a course.
I Highly recommend the course.
Restaurant Web Application with Laravel and React
Then I moved onto another course from @codingphase. This time it was the Restaurant Web Application with Laravel and React course.
Project and what I learned
This was another great course where we built an admin dashboard. The frontend is a beautiful website you can add to a portfolio and you can use when freelancing.
You can check out the frontend of the site here (although I did not optimize it for mobile as my interest was mostly in the backend Laravel part of the course).
In the backend, you can change everything that appears in the frontend, from the menu to SEO settings, etc. In the end, we deployed the site to Heroku.
The only negative about this course was that although the title of the course is Laravel and React, there was no React used in this course. Not a big deal anyway as Codingphase has loads of React courses and I am already a member of his site.
* Once again, if you want to check out codingphase's courses, I'd appreciate it if you used my affiliate link at no extra cost to you.
Build Saas with stripe
After this, I took Build Saas with stripe course from @povilaskorop.
What I learned
Awesome course that filled in gaps I had with using Cashier to work with stripe to do refunds, monthly vs yearly plans, one time payments, assigning features to plans, invoices, apply coupons, etc.
Povilas Teaching style is great as he goes straight into the point but at the same time explains the why. It's very practical stuff that you can implement into your projects straight away.
Project
The project itself was how you would go about building a saas. Meaning, the project lets users sign up, pay with for a monthly or yearly subscription, restrict their features according to which plan they are on.
Another highly recommended course.
How to structure Laravel Project
Then I moved onto another course from @povilaskorop. This time it was the How to structure Laravel Project.
This course has soooo many practice examples on where to put your logic and different design patterns to consider.
He also goes over a few popular open-source packages and explains it’s structure and ways it can be improved.
Learned a lot of useful concepts.
Laracasts Laravel 6 from scratch series
After this, I moved on to browsing some lessons from the Laracasts Laravel 6 from scratch series (free btw) but mostly just worked on the final project (A twitter clone).
Great course and fun project. @jeffrey_way has a great way of explaining and that's why he's the gold standard for teaching Laravel.
Coder's Tape youtube channel
Lastly, I watched @coderstape youtube videos on Laravel and made the final project of his Laravel 6 beginners Playlist - The Questionnaire app.
After that, I watched videos from his advanced Laravel playlist.
Coder’s tape has the best way of explaining and breaking down Advanced Laravel concepts that I’ve seen.
That's it!
That’s it! I was able to go through a lot of projects as I am not a beginner developer so I was able to code ahead and then just check against the tutorials. If you decide to use any of the above resources to learn Laravel you won't go wrong!
Now that I feel really comfortable with Laravel, I will use it to freelance, teach, and ultimately make a saas. Expect a lot of Laravel articles from me going forward.
