My Laravel Journey – Part 1: Foundation

Hey everyone

Welcome to Phase 1 of My Laravel Journey!
In this post, we’ll cover the foundations of Laravel — from installation to understanding the project structure.

Whether you’re completely new to Laravel or just refreshing your basics, this is a great place to start! 🚀

🎯 What You’ll Learn

✅ What Laravel is and why it’s so popular
✅ How to set up Laravel using XAMPP & Composer
✅ Creating your first Laravel project
✅ Connecting your app to a MySQL database
✅ Running migrations
✅ Understanding the Laravel folder structure

💡 What is Laravel?

Laravel is a PHP framework that helps you build web applications quickly and cleanly.
It follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture and includes built-in tools for routing, migrations, authentication, and more — making development faster and cleaner. ⚙️

⚙️ Setting Up the Environment

For this setup, I used XAMPP to manage PHP, Apache, and MySQL easily.

You’ll also need:

PHP 8.1 or higher

Composer
(PHP dependency manager)

Once installed, check your versions:

php -v
composer -v

Then create your Laravel project:

composer create-project laravel/laravel my-laravel-app

Configure your database in .env:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_DATABASE=my-laravel-app
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=

Run migrations and start your server:

php artisan migrate
php artisan serve

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000 — and you’re live! 🎉

🗂️ Laravel Folder Structure Overview

A quick tour of the main folders:

app/ → Core logic (Models, Controllers, Middleware)

config/ → Configuration files (database, cache, etc.)

database/ → Migrations, seeders, factories

public/ → Entry point and public assets

resources/ → Blade templates, JS, CSS

routes/ → Application URLs

storage/ → Cache, logs, uploaded files

Once you understand this structure, Laravel becomes much easier to work with.

🎥 Watch the Full Tutorial

I’ve explained everything step-by-step in my YouTube video — including live setup, migrations, and folder overview.
👉 Watch here: [My Laravel Journey – Part 1: Foundation]
💬 Let’s Connect!

How was your first experience installing Laravel?
Drop a comment or share your setup tips — I’d love to hear how your journey is going!