Welcome to the newly refreshed Laravel Daily! After 2+ years of hiatus, I'm restarting it now to become much more than just a blog. This article will tell you all the details.
First, the short list of the new features:
- Quick search for everything: tutorials, videos, courses, code examples, packages, tags. Just hit Ctrl+K / Cmd+K.
- I'm back to blogging: planning one new longer premium article and 2-3 short ones, every week
- Most old articles are reviewed and updated for Laravel 9
- My courses are here now: I will slowly be moving away from the Teachable platform into this Laravel Daily Premium membership (reasons and details below)
- Moved the open-source code examples from my separate LaravelExamples.com to here, too
- And, well, new design and logo, obviously :)
Now, more details? Let me tell you the story.
Why I'm Doing It, Why Now?
Back in 2015, I published my first article on this Laravel Daily blog. I didn't know then that it would be the beginning of my full-time career as a content creator.
Since then, I've published:
- 400+ articles on this website, QuickAdminPanel blog, Laravel News and elsewhere
- 1000+ YouTube videos
- 36 video courses
- 200+ demo repositories on GitHub
- Thousands of tips on Twitter and GitHub
- Countless experiment projects like Laravel Roadmap, LaraStarters, Laraquiz and others
At some point, I faced a problem: when someone asked me a question, I knew that I had the answer ready and published. Somewhere. Was it a video? A quick Twitter tip? A course lesson? Damn...
Also, I thought that I had presented a lot of topics in the video format, which is not easily searchable or convenient for everyone, so planning to re-publish some video tips as text-based tutorials.
So, for quite a while I've been playing with the idea to consolidate all my content into one easily-searchable database for myself and for others to use.
At first, I thought of it as a totally new project, but then it struck me: why not get back to the roots of this old semi-forgotten website, which was actually the beginning of all of this? And, ironically, this Laravel Daily became my "stage name". So, the work began in Spring 2022, and now you see the first result, with more features yet to be released a bit later.
Big Focus: THE Search
As I said before, I want all my content to be easily searchable, that's why there's a big google-like search field on the homepage, and also you can press Ctrl+K / Cmd+K to call the same search box from anywhere on any page.
You can search for any keyword, or choose one of the auto-suggested tags, like "vue" or "livewire".
The list of the most popular tags is actually on the homepage, too.
Search results will contain these result types:
- Text-based tutorials
- Courses and course lessons
- Links to my YouTube videos
- Code examples from open-source projects
- Links to well-known GitHub packages
More content types will come in 2022, and I will be improving the search results to be as relevant and as useful as possible.
My goal is that if someone wants to learn something related to Laravel, they go to the homepage and find the best content in a few clicks, without browsing for a long time.
Kinda like "curated Google", yes.
Laravel Daily Premium Membership: Away From Teachable Courses
Since 2016, I've released 36 courses on the Teachable platform. In 2021, it became my primary source of income and a full-time job.
But, as the audience grew, I encountered more and more problems:
- Students were asking me questions about purchases/invoices, and I couldn't help them directly, as everything was handled by the platform
- Very limited customization of how my page actually looks/works
- Random annoying bugs and inconveniences of the platform - both for me and for the students
I was patiently dealing with those issues, focusing my energy on what matters most - creating the content. But at some point, it was just too much - especially with the new idea of Laravel Daily born, it was time to move on.
In other words, I grew out of the Teachable platform and decided to move my courses to here.
So, what happens now?
- You can become a Premium Member of Laravel Daily - for the same price as Teachable membership: $129/year (or $29/month). Premium members will get not only the courses but also longer premium tutorials which I will keep publishing every week.
- If you already have a Yearly membership on Teachable, you will get a specific email with instructions on how to transfer your membership here.
- For the upcoming months, I will still be publishing my new courses on BOTH platforms: Teachable and Laravel Daily, to avoid any inconvenience for Teachable students. At the same time, I will be advertising Laravel Daily as the main platform.
The idea here is that you purchase not the "courses membership", but "premium content membership", which will include even more features in the future.
What's Next?
You should expect new content here every week. Also, I will keep adding more features and improving search results. Follow me on Twitter and/or subscribe to the weekly newsletter to find out the latest news.
To be honest, this is probably the scariest launch of a new project for me since 2015, because I want this platform to be my evolving "official brand" for years to come. So, please don't be harsh with any criticism, bugs will be fixed and improvements will come.
And... see you guys in other videos/tutorials :)
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