PHP
Making Software
Dan Hollick created a beautifully illustrated reference manual that explains how the technology behind software actually works. Read more
PHP
★ My current setup for Laravel, PHP and AI development (2026 edition)
[AdSense-A]
After posting a screenshot, I often get questions about which editor, font or tools I'm using. Instead of replying to those questions individually I've decided to just write down the settings and apps that I'm using.
PHP
AI Horseless Carriages
Pete Koomen argues that most AI apps are “horseless carriages,” bolting AI onto old paradigms instead of letting users shape the prompts that drive them. He makes the case that the best AI apps should Read more…
PHP
How to create an awesome product launch video
Aaron Francis shares how he used Claude to create an entire launch video for his new app, without using any traditional motion graphics software. No Remotion, no MCPs — just clever prompting and iteration. Read Read more…
PHP
★ Another new Spatie package drops: spatie/laravel-screenshot
[AdSense-A]
We just released laravel-screenshot, a new package to take screenshots of web pages in Laravel apps.
It uses a driver-based architecture, so you can choose between Browsershot (which requires you to install Chromium) and Cloudflare Browser Rendering (which can be used on environments like Laravel Cloud).
Let me walk you through the package.
PHP
Laravel Fuse: Circuit breaker for queue jobs
Laravel Fuse is a circuit breaker package for Laravel queue jobs. When an external service like Stripe or Mailgun goes down, instead of letting thousands of jobs timeout (30s each), the circuit opens after a Read more…
PHP
Real-world examples of using Laravel AI SDK
Amit Merchant walks through practical use cases for the Laravel AI SDK: mining user data with Eloquent models as context, building a code review bot that comments on PRs, and creating adaptive quiz systems for Read more…
PHP
The Origin of Laravel – a look at v1 Beta 1
A fascinating deep dive into the very first commit of Laravel, made by Taylor Otwell on June 9, 2011. The article explores the original directory structure, the early Eloquent ORM, the session system with its Read more…
PHP
★ Laravel PDF v2 has been released: adds support for Laravel Cloud and easy queuing
[AdSense-A]
A while ago, we released laravel-pdf, a package to generate PDFs in Laravel apps.
Under the hood, it used Browsershot (and therefore Puppeteer/Chrome) to convert HTML to PDF. That approach works great, but it does require Node.js and a headless Chrome binary on your server.
Last week, my buddy Dries shared on X how to generate PDFs using Cloudflare services. This way doesn’t require Node or any binaries. Very neat! This unlocks PDF generation for environments where Node or Chrome cannot be installed easily, like Laravel Cloud.
To support this way of rendering a PDF, we’ve released a new major release (v2) of Laravel PDF. The package now ships with three drivers: Browsershot, Cloudflare Browser Rendering, and DOMPDF. You can also create your own driver. On top of that, we've added queued PDF generation and the ability to set PDF metadata. And to let your AI understand our package, we've added a Laravel Boost skill.
Let me walk you through all of it.
PHP
Excessive Bold
Martin Fowler on the overuse of bold in technical writing — and how LLMs have picked up and spread this practice. The more you emphasize, the less power it has. Read more