These are the advantages of Laravel for platform development

The development of an online platform, website or application involves working with a lot of information. To process this, developers have various frameworks at their disposal. Examples of these frameworks are: Symfony, CodeIgniter and Laravel. One of the most popular frameworks at the moment is Laravel. This framework helps in every aspect of the development of online platforms. The developers at Endeavour Platform also work very successfully with Laravel. In this blog you will read the most important advantages of Laravel and why it could be well for your website too. 

What is Laravel?

Just to refresh your memory, or to give some extra context, what is Laravel? You’ll probably come across the following definition online: “Laravel is a free, open source HP web framework developed by Taylor Otwell and intended for the development of web applications.” You may have already lost your bearings here. No problem, we’ll explain it to you.

Web framework 

First of all, Laravel is a web framework. This is the basis of the underlying structure of a website or web application. The purpose of this structure is to standardize different functionalities that often occur in software development. Before these web frameworks existed, the web developer had to write all the code himself to develop a web application. Now you can use a web framework for frequently used functions on a website or application.

Open-source

Next, the framework is open-source. The name says it all: the source code of this software is available to everyone. You can freely copy, modify and distribute the code without having to pay extra.

PHP

Finally, Laravel is built in PHP. So it is a PHP web framework. PHP stands for: “Hypertext Preprocessor”. This is the programming language in which many websites or web applications are written, such as the large and well-known WordPress. 

When to use Laravel?

If you want to develop an online platform, you need software that can make your desired functionalities possible. This is where Laravel comes in. Laravel is easy to use, both for beginners and experienced web developers. With this framework you get access to easy to use code, which allows you to get started quickly. Tasks that normally take a lot of time can be done quickly and easily with Laravel. This saves time in building and maintaining your online platform. Laravel is therefore extremely popular.

You can get the Laravel codebase from Github, the place for web developers. And because Laravel is open source, this simple code is guaranteed to be transferable. This means you are not stuck with one supplier.

The advantages of Laravel

When choosing a suitable web framework for the development of your online platform, you will probably have heard of Ruby On Rails and Node.JS besides Laravel. So why are you going to work with Laravel? Check out the main features of Laravel below and take advantage of the following benefits:

• Faster go live: because the framework comes with a lot of out-of-the-box functionality and adding extra functionality (through third party packages) is easy, an online platform can be realized quickly.

• Effortless scaling: is your online platform successful? Thanks to the Laravel construction method, you are ready to scale up and expand at any time.

• Security: Laravel is well maintained and regularly updated, so that you are always up-to-date with the latest security updates and bugs can be quickly resolved.

• Shorter lead time: the framework stimulates the use of good practices when writing code and provides a standardized code structure. This allows multiple developers to work on a project at the same time, which results in a shorter turnaround time. An additional benefit is that it results in a healthy codebase, within which changes remain easy to implement.

• Easy transfer: Laravel has become the standard when it comes to PHP web applications. Other companies/developers will therefore be able to take over the codebase with relative ease when necessary. Handy, right? 

The disadvantages of Laravel

Apart from all the advantages, the web framework also has some disadvantages, which you can pay close attention to when weighing up the choice of software. The disadvantages:

• New framework: the platform is still relatively new. The composer is not yet as strong as other web frameworks. However, this is a PHP tool and therefore not a disadvantage of Laravel itself.

• Integrating old systems: integrating old systems is not easy in Laravel either.

Summary 

In short, we can describe Laravel as 

• Open source: anyone can use, modify and distribute it freely

• PHP: the programming language on which the website or web application runs

• Web: it is used only for website or web applications

• Framework: the basis of the underlying structure of a website or web application

The possibilities with Laravel are truly endless. Having your online platform built in Laravel brings the following advantages: faster go live, effortless scaling, always secure, easy to link and never stuck to one supplier.