Laravel is creating a bit of a buzz in the web development community. But what actually is it – and how does it compare to WordPress and Magento? We’re here to explain…
What is Laravel?
It’s one of the world’s most popular open-source PHP web application frameworks, used by developers to build custom websites. In fact, over 1.1 million websites worldwide have been built with Laravel. That’s tiny in comparison to WordPress, but considerably more than Magento. Designed to make being creative easier and more enjoyable, Laravel uses SSH access to deploy code straight from your Github repository.
Why is it causing such a stir?
Laravel is designed to be really versatile and intuitive, freeing you up to be creative without getting bogged down in tricky details. It smoothes the way for you to turn virtually any idea into a great website, helping to keep your coding clean and your site easy to maintain.
Because of that – and its super helpful built-in templates – Laravel makes dev work quicker and easier. In fact, it turns a five- or six-page website into a one-day job, which in turn has the potential to lower your costs, shorten your project turnaround times, increase your agility and give you the opportunity to make more, in less time. Which is always worth looking into.
Plus, the sites Laravel helps you create are easy to scale, evolve and integrates with a range of third-party apps and payment gateways like PayPal – and they’re more resilient and secure long term. It’s also easier to set up caching and optimise site speed, helping to boost your SEO.
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There’s no doubt about it, WordPress gives developers a whole lot of functionality. It’s just vast. But while the ability to add over 54,000 plugins – not to mention themes, recipes and additional coding – gives you masses of flexibility, it also needs more server resources.
Because Laravel’s got an OOP (object-oriented programming) framework, it doesn’t have to run extra, often lengthy PHP code, making it significantly faster than WordPress. If the thought of looking through all that WordPress code seems a little overwhelming, you might just find Laravel a simpler, more straightforward option.
On top of that, Laravel’s security features are a step up from what you’ll find in WordPress and Magento. It doesn’t depend on third-party themes and plugins being updated or maintained – instead, it has a Bcrypt hashing algorithm that means it never has to save passwords in a database. You’ll also find it easy to set up really robust user authentication and restricted features.
Lastly, Laravel scales well, making it easier to future-proof your site, adding new functionality and features. In WordPress, you’ll often hit limitations in the way you can run code, making re-engineering tricky further down the line. In Laravel, it’s much smoother sailing.
So, who’s going to love it? Developers.
And the agencies they work for. And, in turn, the clients they work for. In short, it’s an option worth exploring if you’re a fan of clean code, easy-to-maintain websites and fast, secure, future-proof sites. And really, who isn’t?
