Freelance Laravel Developer UK

Overview

Laravel is a framework for building modern web apps, portals, SaaS products and business systems. It comes with all the tools to allow me to build secure, scalable software, including tools for:

• Creating and managing relational databases - i.e. where your data is stored.
• Creating, reading, updating and destroying data in your database.
• Building frontend layouts and components. They've even developed their own layout templating language named Blade.
• Managing and deploying authentication (i.e. logging in and out)
• And more...

In fact, it's described as a "batteries included" framework, so it's hard to do it justice here. It's best you go and check it out for yourself.

In its raw form, it isn't for marketing websites. However, at least four content management systems have been built with it. So, when these are used, then yes, it's a great tool for a marketing website. The CMSs are: Statamic, Twill, October and Winter (the latter a fork of October). Statamic is a compelling alternative to WordPress if you're looking for a different CMS.

Laravel is ideal for:

• SaaS applications
• Membership sites
• Business portals and dashboards
• Reporting and auditing tools
• ... think systems - from simple to complex.

It competes with other backend frameworks like:

• Symfony (in fact, Laravel is a fork of Symfony, i.e. based on Symfony)
• NestJS (a Node JS framework)
• Django (a python based framework)
• And many more...

Why I love Laravel at Pendigital

There are many reasons to love this framework, but here are my top ones:

• Built with PHP 8: PHP is a modern coding language with excellent performance. PHP is great to code with and is also the backbone of the web. Nearly 80% of all websites worldwide run on PHP. You'll never be short of a PHP dev.
• Developer Friendly: From the ground-up, it's designed to take the pain out of development for devs. Great care and attention has been taken by the founder, Taylor Ottwell, to ensure that the framework is easy to use. And as a result, it means there are plenty of devs to help you.
• Multiple Hosting Solutions: Since it's it's written in PHP there's a plethora of value-for-money hosting solutions available. In fact, Laravel has developed its own hosting. Behind the scenes this uses Amazon Web Services. It's a hosting solution which falls into the serverless category: all maintenance is done for you. But you could also easily use FortRabbit, or others.
• Recent Investment: $57 million USD has recently been invested into the framework. It's not experimental, and it isn't going away anytime soon (always a worry with tech).
• Opinionated: This is a great one. It encourages a consistent structure and development approach. This makes applications easier to understand, maintain and extend over time.
• Build Anything: We feel like we could build any kind of system for you with it. Especially when combined with our app development and web application skillset.

These all add up to make Laravel a safe / low risk choice for your small or medium enterprise.

How can I help you with Laravel

I can help you in many ways: considering the use-cases, these focus on more complex, data-driven web apps and systems.

Specifically, I can help in the following ways:

• Discovery: Helping you define your application. Including: app architecture and screens, through to the structure of your database. Security is key for all Laravel applications so this is defined at this stage. And I'll also help you make good decisions about hosting.
• UI / UX: Supporting you to map user journeys and developing intuitive user interfaces. I prefer to use the Bootstrap 5 CSS framework for all our system designs. Whilst Bootstrap 5 is my base, I'm very happy to design bespoke components from the ground up based on your brand and style guides. I have a Bootstrap 5 theme with hundreds of components in it, which I'm happy to share to validate our design abilities.
• Full Development: Development with best practice code, that's light-weight and high-performing. Accessibility is also an important theme running through all projects for me.
• Testing: I thoroughly test all applications and they come with a 90 day warranty on handover to you. This means I fix any reported bugs during the 90 days post handover.
• Training and Documentation: I'll ensure that you're trained, and know how to use all aspects of your system. I can also put together training shortcut guides to support your team.
• Maintenance: On-going maintenance and upgrading of your system.

Working with us has advantages over larger agency type businesses and other freelancers.

• We have some 30 years plus combined development experience.
• We're very much developers first, we're not an agency. It means you deal direct with the developer writing your code, rather than an account manager. Nothing gets lost in translation.
• I have a business background, which helps with decision-making during discovery.
• We have a special focus on high-performing (i.e. quick to load) front ends.
• We're a micro-business, we don't have a large support team to pay for, so this culminates in better value for money pricing for you.

This is ideal for MVPs and SaaS development.

What we're not.

• We prefer not to use Tailwind as our UI CSS framework. Our preference is Bootstrap 5. We find it provides a rapid, consistent and maintainable foundation for business applications.
• Our expertise is focused on Laravel backends, traditional server-rendered applications and Angular-powered frontends. We prefer to work with technologies where we can provide the highest level of confidence, performance and long-term support.
• Our preference is working on new applications and greenfield projects. Whilst we're happy to review existing systems, we generally find clients achieve better long-term value by modernising older applications rather than continually patching legacy code.

Next Steps

I'd love to talk to you about your plans for a Laravel application. Please contact me and we can meet to discuss in more detail.