Anyone heard of Laravel?

@GCarlD

Well-Known Member
Hi all!

This is a kind of Wordpress vs Laravel question. Does anyone have any experience with Laravel? Would you recommend it?

I basically would like to know the pros and cons of opting for Laravel over Wordpress. Or something else entirely? What do you use?

For the sake of discussion, let's say it's in order to build a website with an e-commerce section that needs to be able to deal with large orders of products and customer communication e.g. automated emails to customers like 'estimated delivery 3rd March 2018' etc.

Thank you :)
 
I've read all sorts like the loading times are slower than WordPress and it's not as good for SEO etc...

I know for more custom made websites Laravel is best but apart from that, are there any more pros over Wordpress?

In terms of updating the website or making minor edits, would you have to pretty much be a dev? Or are basic updates easy enough without dev knowledge?
 
They're not really the same thing. Wordpress is a CMS you can hack at to work in a certain way, whereas Laravel is a PHP framework that you can use to build web applications with the functionality you need (though there's a CMS already that runs on Laravel called Statamic). Basically, if you need to manage content then I'd use Wordpress or similar. If you need a site that has more user-interaction, custom functionality and needs to make use of the server environment, then Laravel is the way to go.

Laravel requires much more DevOps knowledge to work with as you need to set up and configure its own server environment for it to run on. Wordpress works out of the box so to speak, but Laravel is there for you to build with. It's a pile of wood and nails, whilst WP is a flatpack shed. In term of speed, SEO, etc, that mainly comes down to the code you've written and the environment it's set up on. If you use a cheap server that's not optimised or write sloppy markup then you can't expect great results.

Laravel is probably overkill for most sites. I had a client who needed a Laravel e-commerce site migrating and they were shocked at how much it was going to cost. It was just a single page site that an agency had knocked up from an old project, but setting up a new server, configuring the payment gateway and everything else was a pretty big job that required specialist knowledge they weren't expecting. I have another client who's whole site and application is built on Laravel, but they have a whole Laravel agency that builds and maintains it.
 
Thanks, that's great info! Is Statamic built into Laravel then? And is there a WooCommerce type of function or is that something that would need to be built separately?

What do you use? I can't remember what you recommended in the past when you moved on from WP...
 
Thanks, that's great info! Is Statamic built into Laravel then? And is there a WooCommerce type of function or is that something that would need to be built separately?
I believe Statamic is built with Laravel rather than actually being something that's included with it. Since it's a PHP framework you can basically build your own CMS with it. There's probably a WooCommerce-like template out there for Laravel but that's not really what a framework is for. If you're a PHP developer then I probably wouldn't use Laravel, it would likely cause more hassle than it's worth.

What do you use? I can't remember what you recommended in the past when you moved on from WP...

I use Perch. It costs £50 per site, but you can download it and try it using XAMP/MAMP without a license. Once you get your head around the way it works, it's hard to go back to another CMS. You basically create your mark up in chunks, add Perch tags to create editable section or custom functionality, then display it all using a simple PHP snippet in your page. It took me a few attempts to 'get it' but now I can knock up a pretty complex site really quickly. It gives you complete control over your HTML, so SEO and stuff like that is left entirely to the developer. It basically just manages your content, and even then it only manages the content you tell it to manage.

If you want to sell stuff online too, there's the Shop addon that manages all that for you.
 
No worries, give me a shout if you're stuck with Perch and I'll try and explain it best I can. I can probably dig out some examples of sites I've built that use it too.
 
Have you thought of looking at e-commerce specific frameworks like Magento or Oro-Commerce? If they're too involved why not look at the SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings such as BigCommerce or Shopify? I'm a Certified BigCommerce Developer so can help out if you decide to go that route.
 
That ultimately depends on what the client or the project stakeholder needs as well as the budget,timeline and long-term plan of the project. Having said that, both the Wordpress as well as Laravel is actually good or best depending on certain parameters or conditions. I have explained it below.But I will also conclude as to which of the above two actually holds an edge over the other.
Wordpress :
  • If the client budget is limited or timeline of the project is very short,then it will be better to opt for wordpress
  • If an e-commerce site is to be developed,then Woo-commerce using wordpress is a better alternative as woo-commerce is exclusively been developed for the e-commerce purposes and it has got an excellent support and resource system as well.
  • If the client wants to simply test the waters or test the viability of the product or have a MVP(Minimum Viable Product) version of his or her new product,then it will be a bit better to develop or test this in Wordpress . Of course,if the product clicks and is successful,then he may or may not have to re-create this again in Laravel or Node JS or other such technologies for scalability purpose. This approach is a little double edged sword as it might prove to be costlier in the long run.
Laravel :
  • If factors like better security, scalability,speed,customization is a huge factor,then hands down Laravel is miles ahead of wordpress.
  • Thanks to the built-in features like CSRF Protection mechanism in laravel,web applications made in Laravel are really more secure than wordpress. Wordpress severely lags behind in this aspect.
  • Web applications made in laravel can be customized to no limits.The only limitation here is the developers capability.This is definitely a huge factor when developing some products with cutting-edge features
  • The authorization and authentication system of laravel is really a good feature. Laravel makes these features really easy to implement
  • Laravel supports popular cache back-ends, such as Redis and Memcached out-of-the-box.Because of this,the web applications developed in laravel is often faster.
  • The configuration error and handling exception feature is also very good in laravel
  • The support of modern programming paradigms like MVC framework has added a boost in the overall productivity of applications made in laravel. Because of this,the separation of business logic and presentation code is very much possible
Conclusion :
So,based on the above points,we can conclude that although both wordpress and laravel have got their positives,however we can conclude from the above points that Laravel does hold a better edge over wordpress due to its more offerings and features.
 
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