Laravel made easy - with peaknetworks Hosting

What is Laravel?

Laravel is an open source PHP web framework developed by Taylor Otwell. It was first released in 2011 and has since become one of the most popular PHP frameworks according to Stackoverflow's annual survey of programmers.

It owes its popularity to its elegant design, its large and helpful community and its good documentation.

Since more and more peaknetworks customers are also relying on Laravel as an ecosystem, we describe the advantages and setup of Laravel on peaknetworks hosting here.

What are Laravel's strengths?

1. Elegant Design

PHP has gotten a bad reputation in the developer world in recent years. The syntax and API have become outdated, the community has been heavily focused on WordPress and some outdated legacy code has not left a good impression on developers.

Laravel shines in a different light here. A clean code structure and a simple, easy-to-read syntax allow you to concentrate on development. If you get involved with the framework, you can be rewarded with faster results and easily maintainable code.

2. An amazing community

The focus on developers has paid off with Laravel. If the extensive official documentation is not enough for you, you can still find good answers on the many Internet boards that deal with Laravel.

You can also find many free plugins that save you a lot of time when developing web projects.

3. Eloquent ORM

ORM (object-relational mapping) is a software development technique that makes it possible to abstract database structures with classes. Laravel offers its own ORM called Eloquent, which makes working with a database much easier. Eloquent simplifies interaction with databases by allowing developers to work with databases using expressive syntax instead of raw SQL queries.

If you prefer to interact with the database yourself, Laravel also offers a very comprehensive query builder, that allows you to perform SQL queries in PHP. Additionally, it offers protection against SQL injections and query acceleration thanks to a Redis-based caching backend.

4. Artisan Command line tools

Laravel includes a powerful command line tool called Artisan. It provides various commands for common tasks such as database migrations, testing, and code generation. Developers can use Artisan to automate repetitive tasks and increase productivity.

5. Maintainability and Performance

Updating application regularly is often a difficult and time-consuming task. Not so with Laravel, database migrations are easy to create, and the framework can be updated with a single command.

In addition, the speed of websites made with Laravel is usually very good. Numerous different caching solutions are provided, from database queries to individual software components.

Can you use Laravel in a shared Hosting Environment?

Time and again, you read on the Internet that a VPS (virtual private server) is best suited for Laravel. These are typically much more expensive and more complicated to manage compared to a shared hosting webspace.

peaknetworks offers a real alternative to the classic VPS with full support for Laravel on our shared hostings. We give all our customers SSH access to the hosting and of course also allow them to create databases and domain assignments themselves. As one of the few hosters, we allow each hosting customer to define the desired PHP version per directory.

In addition, several Laravel applications can run in parallel on a shared hosting. For example, a test instance, on which new functionalities can be tested, and a live instance can be within one hosting at the same time.

I already have a Laravel project, can I migrate it to peaknetworks?

Yes, we offer a free migration service for Laravel applications to peaknetworks.

Please e-mail us via our contact form and a Laravel specialist from our support department will contact you shortly. We will support you free of charge with the migration of the data and also with testing in the new environment, so that your customers will not notice anything of the move, apart from the faster loading time.

How do I start a Laravel Project at peaknetworks?

The best way to do this is to get started with hosting right here. You will also receive a free domain (.at, .de, .ch, .com, .net, .org) with your hosting, and you can get started right away. We are also happy to help you with the initial setup on the command line.

I would like to manage my Laravel project with version control system (GIT)?

On our web servers, 'git' is pre-installed for you and you can easily manage your new or existing project on the server. It doesn't matter whether you use Github, Gitlab or other source code hosters. If you want your own private source code management system, you can also host it at peaknetworks. The best way to do this is to write a message to our support team.