How to Make a Basic Website using Laravel
Creating a basic website using Laravel, a popular PHP framework known for its elegant syntax and robust features, is a great way to get started with web development. This guide will walk you through the steps of setting up Laravel, creating a basic web page, and serving it to your audience.
Prerequisites
Before you start, ensure you have the following installed on your system:
- PHP (version 7.3 or higher)
- Composer (Dependency Manager for PHP)
- A text editor or IDE of your choice
- A command-line interface (CLI)
Step 1: Installing Laravel
-
Via Laravel Installer: First, you can install the Laravel installer globally via Composer by running the following command in your CLI:
shcomposer global require laravel/installer -
Creating a New Project: Once the installer is in place, create a new Laravel project by running:
shlaravel new my_basic_websiteReplace
my_basic_websitewith the desired project name. This command creates a new directory with all the necessary Laravel files.
Step 2: Understanding the Laravel Directory Structure
After installation, it's crucial to understand the basic directory structure of a Laravel application:
/app: Contains the core code of the application, including models./resources: Holds the views and uncompiled assets like LESS, SASS, or JavaScript./routes: Contains all the route definitions for your application. Web routes are inweb.php.
Step 3: Setting Up a Basic Route and View
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Define a Route: Open the
routes/web.phpfile and define a new route that returns a view:phpRoute::get('/', function () { return view('welcome'); });This code specifies that when the user accesses the root URL (
/), Laravel should return a view namedwelcome. -
Creating a View: Navigate to
/resources/viewsand create a new file namedwelcome.blade.php. Blade is Laravel's templating engine. You can now add some HTML content:html<html> <head> <title>My Basic Website</title> </head> <body> <h1>Welcome to My Basic Laravel Website!</h1> </body> </html>
Step 4: Running the Laravel Development Server
Laravel comes with a built-in development server. To start it, run the following command in your project's root directory:
php artisan serve
This command will start a development server at http://localhost:8000. When you navigate to this URL in a web browser, you should see the "Welcome to My Basic Laravel Website!" message.
Step 5: Making it Your Own
Now that you have a basic website running, you can start expanding it by:
- Adding more routes and views for additional pages.
- Utilizing controllers to organize your application logic.
- Connecting to a database and creating models for data handling.
- Adding authentication to secure parts of your website.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You've just created a basic website using Laravel. This is just the starting point of what's possible with Laravel. The framework's extensive documentation and vibrant community can help you delve deeper into more advanced features and best practices for building robust, scalable web applications. Keep experimenting and building to become more proficient with Laravel and web development in general.
