Highlights

This video is the companion to https://vimeo.com/164946495 , which explains the equivalent process on Mac OS.

But the fundamental difference between Mac OS and Windows, where Homestead is concerned, is the lack of native support for NFS (a very fast and efficient networked filesystem protocol) on Windows. Historically, this has made local development work on Windows painfully slow as compared to on Mac OS.

Well, those days are gone. Even though the Vagrant manual still imparts that “NFS is not supported on Windows”, this is simply untrue. The winnfsd daemon for Windows, and the Vagrant Plug-in wrapper that has…

Historically, the Platform Media extension has provided the ability to upload files and reference them in business logic and in Blade templates. But users were fairly limited in how they could interact with uploaded media files. For example, it was non-trivial to associate uploaded files with records in a database table. It was necessary to add custom logic to manage the associations, and even more cumbersome was creating all of the necessary interface components and interactions.

Introducing: Platform Media v3.3

Join Cartalyst Community Liaison, Ben Johnson, for a quick spin through some of the new features and functionality:

Platform Media v3.3 dramatically improves…

Platform Tutorial Series — Part 5: Version-Controlling Extensions and Themes

So, you’ve created your first extension. You’re ready to place your code under version control. Perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, “Wouldn’t it be nice to make it easy for other developers and clients to install and update my extension…” Well, you’ve come to the right place, and once it’s all setup, including your extension in a project requires only a single line of code.

1.) Last we left it, we had created a couple of extensions. And you’ll recall from Part 2 that we had created custom themes, both…

We’re hiring a front end developer

The position has been filled. Thank you for all the submissions. The response was encouraging and a bit overwhelming. ;) Continue to code well, and rock on!

It’s tough: the process of finding a front-end developer. A developer with the capacity to master the many disciplines associated with the art of the “client side”. Somewhere, teetering between the stack, we’ll find the one we’re looking for.

A leaf on the wind, who can drift between JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and a bit of PHP. A Creative, full of gumption and heart, this person has the…

Platform Tutorial Series — Part 4: Creating Your First Extension

What are Platform Extensions? Laravel embraces the concept of “packages”, which are simply collections of files (configuration files, controllers, views, translations, assets, etc.), organized in a way that more or less mirrors the top-level application. Platform Extensions are Laravel packages with several additional features: the ability to install/uninstall and enable/disable using the GUI; the ability to specify dependencies; and Composer integration, so they can be distributed using the normal Composer mechanisms.

Why are they useful? They allow us to isolate functionality; to modularize or componentize our code. …

Pro Tips: Edition 2

1.) Take advantage of Composer’s “no-scripts” switch.

Oftentimes, some problem with your code, or that of a third-party repository, will prevent Composer from completing an “update” or “install” operation successfully.

In such cases, you can take advantage of a simple Composer switch that will prevent the vast majority of source-code jams-ups from manifesting during Composer operations:

composer --no-scripts ...

When working in Cartalyst Platform, there are a number of scripts that are run before or after various Composer operations. The vast majority of the time, an error in your own code bubbles-up when Laravel assesses all of the included files, and then Platform layers-on its own assessment…

Platform Tutorial Series — Part 3: Creating Your First Theme

https://vimeo.com/161711044

In Cartalyst Platform, a theme is a collection of presentation-related assets: images, fonts, CSS and JS libraries, view templates, email message templates, and the like.

In this video, we explain to you how Platform’s own default themes work, how they’re installed, and how they’re source-controlled. Then, we show you how to create your own bare-bones themes (both front-end and admin-area), by duplicating and stripping-down the default themes and extending them as desired.

Next, we add onto the theme and explore the asset resolution and overriding mechanisms, and show you how to replace individual theme assets with your own overrides. In the process, we discuss how to source-control your themes in an optimal way, and offer several useful tips along the way.

Thanks for watching! We look forward to hearing your comments, questions, and feedback.

Code well, rock-on!

Platform Tutorial Series — Part 2: Post-Install Configuration

https://vimeo.com/161531470

In Part 2 of our new Platform video tutorial series, Cartalyst Community Liaison, Ben Johnson, takes you through a few simple yet crucial configuration changes that should be made in any new Platform installation.

Ben also covers the basics regarding Laravel’s .env file, and shows you how to add your own configuration directives. He also explains the /config directory: what’s in it, how files arrive there, and offers several source-control and workflow tips.

Give it a spin, and stay tuned for the next episode, Part 3: Creating Your First Theme!

Code well, rock on!