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The world of development and programming is ever-evolving, and new technologies come and go with increasing regularity. But a few outliers exist where stagnancy is imperative, and Laravel development is one prominent example as it still cements itself as a favorite in 2024.
Synonymous with PHP, it has become an essential aspect of software development, and most of the world’s leading firms still use it to build products for the internet today. This technology has been in use for almost two decades, and its influence only grows every year.
It is not because of a lack of a competing option in this field but due to its place in software development and its renowned efficiency at the task. PHP and Laravel development continues to be highly used, but they can seem foreign to a newbie.
In this article, we’ll break down Laravel development and everything that accompanies this development framework. By reading this post, you will be able to make an informed decision on whether this development framework and its accompanying language is the technology of choice for you or your product.
Since Laravel is developed using PHP and Object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts, let's start with understanding the basics of PHP development.
What is PHP?
PHP stands for ‘personal home page.’ It’s the language written for developing personalized websites.
PHP is commonly considered to be a fairly divisive language and is one of the most-used server-side scripting languages available today. Most websites today utilize PHP in some way. Everything from Facebook to Wikipedia is powered by it.
A PHP developer is often seen as a backend developer that manages the server side of an application or website. They also most likely have experience using the following backend technologies
- Linux
- Apache
- MySQL
It is the coding language of choice for many in-house and remote developers. PHP is easy and cheap to set up and the technology makes running server-side applications simple to deploy. Plus, PHP also has a huge framework of designated functions that can be used to build a diverse range of server-side applications and modules.
What is Laravel Development?
Laravel is the popular PHP framework today and even surpasses all other frameworks by an order of magnitude. It is open-source too and is specifically designed for creating web apps. The Laravel framework accomplishes this with a powerful system of built-in features and an intricate host of libraries.
It means that the frameworks don’t have developers writing popular features from scratch. Laravel has a built-in authentication system too which helps ensure your web application that is designed with Laravel remains secure.
Laravel also has object-related mapping (ORM) where database tables are saved as classes rather than JSON tables, which in turn, makes it easier to specify different classes of access to data.
The framework was first released to the public in 2011 and has since been used by most website development firms for web and mobile app development, and works similar to PHP’s MVC (Model, View, and Controller) format as pictured above.
It is in the web development world where Laravel is mostly deployed. Another of its biggest strengths is automation, which prevents developers from having to load a virtual server each time they test a line of code.
Laravel speeds up rapid prototyping and is entirely virtual too, which enables development teams to use it anywhere.
Being an open-source PHP framework is also a big advantage as the community surrounding the framework has countless tutorials, blogs, and debugging measures for any application imaginable. Finally, developers hail this framework for its thorough documentation.
At Aloa Laravel development company, we have a team spending time building web apps and maintaining them using the Laravel framework. Our developers work alone and in team environments and usually have the same tasks.
When alone, they fix Laravel website errors in real-time, perform data migrations, build apps one set at a time or implement security measures.
When working in a team environment, they build the architecture for a Laravel application, consult with users, and assess each other’s work. It all lends to an incredibly diverse and complex set of responsibilities for a Laravel developer.
The Usage of Laravel Development Services
Laravel isn’t the only PHP framework available today but programmers do inhibit a selection bias towards it whenever eCommerce websites or web application development for startups are on the table. Here are some of the reasons for this blatant (but justified) favoritism:
I. Fast Performance
In today’s digital economy, speed in the user experience is the most important aspect of any technology. Users don’t stick around on web pages for more than a few seconds if it takes time to load. And as the numbers of mobile applications increase globally, speed has become even more of a priority.
PHP is already optimized for speed. It offers many different ways to adjust memory allocation and reduces the length of garbage collecting processes. PHP 8 takes this a step further with the introduction of new libraries such as the Just-In-Time compilation which vastly improves its performance.
Laravel is even speedier in performance thanks to additional functions that optimize its speed even further. These functions are Redis and Memcached, both of which augment cache server support.
II. Routing
Routing is very customizable in Laravel and is its biggest advantage over PHP. The task is handled in many ways using the Laravel framework.
The first is using controllers which can be used to provide various functions to different sections of a website. Code routing is the second way that allows users to customize features for different sections of the website, and prevents them from having to host a variety of controllers for each section of the website.
Routing can also be done by using host controllers at different web extensions and then controlling the data that gets routed to them.
III. Security
Security is one of the most fundamental parts of digital technology today, and Laravel is particularly robust in it. Its authentication is implemented well and comes in two layers: the “guards” and “providers” and these store data in every session.
Guards are responsible for assigning users that are allowed and what level of access they get, and providers specify how users are fetched from the database.
Laravel supports Eloquent and database queries natively, and they can be easily changed to amend the way the framework retrieves user information. It also has support for many different authorization functions out of the box.
These two come in two main categories gates and policies, and they work similarly to controllers and routing whereas gates generally deal with particular modules or resources.
Gates act as closures that determine if a user is eligible to do a certain task or not. Policies are typically organized around a model or resource. They can also be used to choose different levels of access.
On WordPress, for instance, a user can be allowed to write blog posts using a ‘post’ command, whereas an admin would have more privileges and will be able to modify blog posts, using a ‘PostPolicy’ command.
When Does Laravel Make Sense?
Laravel is the most popular framework on GitHub, and this popularity is mostly in part because of its easy learning curve. This ease of use is the main reason why Laravel is considered one of the most widely used programming languages, battling it out with the likes of JavaScript and Python.
But despite its ease of use, Laravel is a highly capable framework and can create complex solutions for a wide array of problems and situations.
One can view Laravel in a similar light as PHP as the two are essentially the same, and power almost 80% of the internet today despite dating as far back as the early 90s. PHP’s flexibility and prowess enable it to run anything on a website or a web application with ease.
But PHP has been around for a while and isn’t the most pretty development language due to its bulky and unwieldy nature.
Laravel is different in this regard and due to its updated nature, compared to PHP, is much more pleasant and efficient to work with. Laravel can be used in a plethora of situations and companies such as Aloa excel in its implementation in their products.
Our company has capable Laravel experts with years of experience and can design custom solutions for clients using Laravel.
Every time you require a modification to your homepage, Laravel can be used. This includes running a blog or hosting a Software-as-a-Solution app on your website. With Laravel dedicated developers, you have the freedom to customize every single aspect of web development.
Top 8 Advantages Of Laravel Development
We’ve raved endlessly about the popularity of Laravel but haven’t really discussed the reasons for its dominance as a PHP framework. Let’s get into some of the reasons why Laravel developers and consumers prefer this platform over every other. Some of them are already mentioned earlier, but we’ll be looking at all of them from an in-depth point of view.
Starting with…
1. Simplicity
Being the most popular PHP framework, Laravel is automatically the preferred option for most developers wanting to develop web apps and websites. And it is to no one’s surprise that the framework is also one of the most familiar to most developers.
Add in its open-source nature and more than a decade of support, and Laravel quickly becomes the most simple-to-use framework available today.
It also has a range of built-in templates which make development simpler and easier for developers. It means that the output numbers from Laravel are unmatched where seasoned developers could churn out a 5 or 6-page website in a day or two.
Not to mention that a fast development time results in lower costs and quicker delivery for the business.
2. Security
Security is the primary concern for businesses in a post-pandemic world. With cybercrime and cyberattacks increasing exponentially year after year, businesses want the most secure platforms and frameworks to base their products on.
Laravel makes configuring advanced security features a breeze which can help web apps and websites stay protected from hackers and cybercriminals.
We mentioned security as one of the reasons for Laravel’s usage but now, to get a bit technical, the framework uses a Bcrypt hashing algorithm which means it cannot save any passwords in the database.
It also has excellent user authentication and restricted access features that are easy to create. All of these measures assist to keep you and your customer’s data safe and secure.
3. Website Performance
Unlike most of the other frameworks available, Laravel supports caching for your website out-of-the-box. This is great for boosting your site speed and ensuring downtimes remain at a minimum between page revisits and website navigation.
It also makes other speed optimization techniques easy to implement. These include memory use reduction and database indexing, which is really easy to implement.
All of these performance-enhancing tactics make Laravel an excellent choice for your business if site speed and SEO friendliness are some of your business needs.
4. Excellent For Traffic-Handling
Your website needs to be well-equipped to handle the growing nature of your business and as traffic volume increases, the chances of experiencing slowdowns or crashes increase too.
A website built in Laravel can easily handle website requests and do them much quicker than most other frameworks.
The Laravel framework uses a special message queue system, which enables you to sideline certain website tasks such as sending emails until a later time. If you can control time-consuming tasks, your website can process priority-based tasks more quickly.
5. Flexibility
Developers can build extensive eCommerce websites or a simple and professional B2B website as the framework affords them a lot of flexibility. It does this with its extensive pre-installed authorization libraries, and it can also let developers create and support a large range of advanced features for your site, such as encryption and password reset.
It also features a lot of third-party packages available to provide your website with a variety of functionalities and features. These include the likes of Socialite which enables users to sign into your site by using social media profiles.
6. Easy Third-Party Integrations
Most websites today require some form of third-party integration and these can range from custom payment gateway systems like Paypal or Stripe or a tool for marketing that your company uses.
Regardless of the type of integration, developers find it incredibly easy to integrate third-party apps in Laravel with its clean APIs for integration.
7. Easy Website Maintenance
While it may not always be the case, traditionally, Laravel-based websites and web apps are known to be easy to maintain over time. If you find yourself lacking a few features in the future in your website built with Laravel, any developer could pick up from where the previous development iteration was left off and add the necessary features.
Laravel has a few standout features such as clean code, MVC architecture (which separates presentation and logic), and OOP principles, which make website maintenance very easy with time.
8. The Cost of Laravel Websites
Laravel is free to use owing to its open-source nature. This means as long as you have some level of proficiency in the framework, you can get started with no pricing concerns at all.
It goes without saying that most of the value is lost when you hire a decent Laravel developer to build your product for you or aid in your eCommerce development process.
But since maintenance is generally far and few for Laravel-based projects, the long-term costs of using the framework are unmatched compared to some other competing frameworks.
Disadvantages Of Laravel Development
No list is complete without a bit of a balancing act, so here are a few of the most notable disadvantages of using Laravel.
- The framework is slower than some other PHP frameworks.
- It has far less built-in support than many of its contemporaries.
- While it is incredibly secure, it is still limited by the inherent insecurities of PHP.
Conclusion
The domain of Laravel development is a great pathway for companies who are looking to build web apps and websites and want to work with a powerful framework. If you’re new to Laravel web development, beginning with the tools and resources mentioned is an excellent way to kickstart your journey.
If you’re looking for a software development company that specializes in Laravel and PHP development, Aloa is the ideal choice for any website or web app you require. We have the most talented developers and designers globally and have been providing top-notch services to hundreds of clients including Bach Bracket, Maro, and SOCPOC.
If you are looking for a reliable company for your Laravel project management and outsourcing needs or if you have some queries, get in touch with us at [email protected], and we'll take care of everything for you. You can also visit our blog for more information on software development and the latest in-depth trends and news in the industry.
