DEV Community: EmmaDSCodes

Building Abridged Shelf - Free shorter classic stories

EmmaDSCodes — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 20:24:55 +0000

Making classics more accessible

I have a soft spot for mythology and classic stories. I have read most of the books on Abridged Shelf at least once, several of them more than that. But a lot of them are long. Epic poetry is not something you casually get through on a Tuesday evening, and the older translations can be genuinely hard going. The language demands focus, and focus is a resource I do not always have.

So I made shorter versions.

Abridged Shelf is a free library of public domain classics that I have abridged and modernized. Abridged, not summarized. The distinction matters a lot to me. I am not writing study notes or plot recaps. I take the actual text and condense it: the B-plots that do not carry the story, the scenes that spend forty lines describing a shield, those get compressed down into the beats that matter. What is left is still the story, told in its own voice, just tighter.

The other half is the language. A lot of these translations are over a century old, and the English shows it. So I modernize spelling and phrasing into contemporary English. Again, not simplified. This is not a children's edition and I am not dumbing anything down. It is the same book, in language that does not fight you.

I also made some editorial calls. For the Greek epics I use the Greek names rather than the Roman ones that a lot of older translations default to, because if we are reading Homer then it should be Athena and not Minerva. Small thing. Matters to me.

And as a nod to a certain static site generator I maintain, the first book I abridged was the original Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It is already short. Now it is very short. I did a few more by Stevenson after that, mostly because they were quick and I needed to get the workflow right before pointing it at an epic poem.

The abridgment process

I knew from the start that I needed to use AI for this. I also do not entirely trust AI, which is a useful combination of beliefs to hold at the same time. It means you build guardrails.

Without giving away every single secret, the process looks roughly like this:

Find a translation that is actually good (and complete!) and actually public domain.
Split it into chapters, which often needs to be done differently for each book.
Abridge one chapter at a time against a very strictly defined spec.
Run automated QA before I ever read it.
Read it myself.

The per-chapter thing is the important part. Keeping the original chapter structure keeps the work scoped and stops the model from drifting, wandering off, or quietly rewriting the shape of the book. Small window, tight spec, one chapter.

Then comes QA. Before I look at anything, it goes through automated checks run by two different models, deliberately from different families so they do not share the same blind spots. The checks are looking for three failure modes: did we lose something important, did we invent something that was never there, and did the model pull in details it knows about the book from training rather than from the source text in front of it. That last one is the sneaky one. A model that has read the Iliad a thousand times will happily supply a detail that is famous but is not actually present in the original texts.

After the machines are done, I read it. Every chapter. This is why I get a little defensive when people hear "AI" and think slop. I am extremely involved in this process. I built several custom pipelines specifically so I could stay involved without it taking the rest of my life. I may absolutely still miss things though, please let me know if you find a problem. There is a feedback link in the footer.

The audiobooks

It matters to me that the reading side of this is always free. These books are free. My versions should be free too. And they will be. Unlimited. Forever. Free. You don't even need to sign in or sell your soul to ad trackers.

But the process above costs real money to run, and so does the audio. So there is a patron option: pay whatever you think it has been worth, (minimum three dollars to cover transaction fees), and you get the audiobooks. Everyone gets the same perks regardless of amount. You can pay multiple times if you want, but you get nothing extra for it except my sincere gratitude. That is the whole model.

Also! If you're early, you get in for free. The first 25 people to make an account get the Early Adopter tier: same perks as Patrons, forever, no payment required. Free audiobooks for life, just for showing up early. After that it goes back to the patron model above. Sign up at abridgedshelf.com/register

The audiobooks are the part I am most quietly proud of. I am running a very good open source TTS model locally, and the quality is the only thing I have heard that comes close to ElevenLabs, which is fantastic and would also be financially ruinous at this volume. So instead I have three computers in my apartment generating audio. The Odyssey took roughly 25 hours of inference on a beefy workstation. That is why the audiobooks lag behind the text. But the goal is that every book will have an audio version.

As with any project, you learn things. Some of those lessons are unexpectidly disturbing. Apparently this model panics if you give it too much input at once, and before I figured that out, I generated the most cursed audio I have ever heard in my entire life. So I wrote a quick algorithm to split the text down. Simplified: every sentence gets its own WAV file (but I do some smartish stuff for long sentences). For each one I keep the input text, the audio, and a JSON manifest with durations and offsets.

That manifest turned out to be the best accidental decision in the project, because it means I know exactly which sentence is being spoken at any moment. So the site highlights the sentence on the reader view as you listen. So, you can read and listen at the same time, which I love, because sometimes there is a noise in the room or I get distracted and I miss a line and now I don't have to scrub backwards to find it. I just glance at the screen.

It also means verification is possible. Since I know what every WAV file is supposed to say, I can check whether it says it. So there is a verification pass where I transcribe every single generated clip back to text with speech-to-text and compare it against the input. The comparison is deliberately lossy, because you do not want to fail a line over punctuation. For genuine edge cases, mostly homophones where static analysis cannot decide, I hand it to a local text model and ask whether these two things mean the same thing. That was much nicer than maintaining a giant homophone mapping table.

On top of that there is a smoke test during generation that looks at the waveform itself. Is this plausibly speech, or is it noise, or is it just silence? If it fails a few times in a row the job cancels itself, because that usually means something dumb has happened, like running out of disk space. Local AI takes a LOT of disk space. So do WAV files...

I do a lot of spot checks by ear too. And now that the chunking is better, I am going to regenerate some of the earlier books which have artifacts where the sentence splitting wasn't as smart. But again, priorities. I'm using prosumer hardware, not H100s.

How the site is actually built

This is the part I find most fun to talk about.

It started as a plain HydePHP site. Markdown files in, static site out, done. Then I started wanting things: a reading list, remembering where you left off, and eventually audiobooks behind a payment wall. All of which need a backend.

So I wanted Laravel. But I also still wanted Hyde, because Hyde gives me things I did not want to give up. No data models for content. No database for content. Everything in version control. I can build locally and push without touching a remote database. RSS feeds and sitemaps generated for free. Content on disk is just nice to work with.

My first instinct was what I have done before, which is pull the Hyde framework into the Laravel app. But the current stable Hyde is a few versions behind the latest Laravel (v3 is on the way though!), and I wanted the latest Laravel. So I went with option two, which honestly turned out better anyway: inside the Laravel project there is a hyde/ subfolder containing an entire HydePHP project, and that is where all the static content lives.

The site runs on Laravel Cloud, and the Hyde build runs as part of deployment. Laravel then serves the resulting static files, essentially acting as a very small web server written in Laravel, with some wrapper objects around it. Hit the front page and it resolves the right file and returns its contents. There is a tiny bit of overhead in finding the file and booting the framework, but Laravel boots fast, Laravel Cloud is obsessively tuned, and static pages get cached on the edge anyway. It feels indistinguishable from GitHub Pages to me.

Then the obvious problem: I went to all this trouble for dynamic content, and now my pages are static files.

The solution is a token system. Hyde does not know anything about the dynamic parts. It just emits placeholder tokens, and the Laravel controller string replaces them on the way out. So the navbar changes if you are logged in, and the patron link disappears if you already are one, without any Blade recompilation and without any views living on the Laravel side.

That last bit was a deliberate boundary. I did not want views in two places, partly for my own sanity and partly because AI agents kept getting confused about which layer owned what. Making the rule absolute, no views in Laravel, dynamic content only through replacement tokens, fixed it completely.

Caching works nicely with this. Anonymous responses go out with cache headers, so most requests never reach the origin at all. Logged in users skip that header and get a narrower cache that still serves the correct dynamic bits.

Working with agents

On agents: as the great Aaron Francis said at Laravel Live UK, you have to contain them. Give them a frame to work inside.

So I built the frame by hand. The Hyde and Laravel integration, the gateway, the structural rules, all of that I designed and largely wrote myself. Some parts I wrote as pseudocode and handed over for implementation, but the shape was mine.

After that, I mostly stopped reading the generated code. It goes through a review agent running a different model, I glance at whether the right files were touched, and then I validate the actual feature by using it. Anything security related I still read properly, every time. And I do all the QA myself.

The design came later. My original layouts were stock HydePHP, which gives me all the UI elements I need, but it of course does not look very unique. So I did a few design passes with Claude Fable once the structure was solid.

Laravel Cloud

First time using it, no affiliation, and I have to give them a shout out. Laravel is magic for PHP, Laravel Cloud is that same magic applied to hosting. It truly is the Laravel of hosting providers.

Concrete example. My repo was ballooning with WAV files and deploys were crawling, so I compressed everything to MP3 and purged the masters from git. But I still wanted the masters stored somewhere. One button, S3 compatible bucket, done. I could have thrown them on Google Drive, but wanted to be able to send the files through code given I'm running generations on different computers and bringing in a Drive API integration brings a rewally different stack. So wanted Laravel to easily push the masters, semi automatically now and fully automatically later.

That is a pattern I believe in generally: manual first, then semi automatic, then automatic. Each round teaches you which parts are actually annoying and what the next iteration needs. You cannot design that from the armchair.

Stripe setup was also painless, which is not a sentence I expected to write about anything related to payments. But they have really thought through DX.

What's next

I have a long list of books I am excited to add.

The site is free to read and will always be free to read. If you want the audiobooks, three dollars minimum, pay what you think it is worth, and you get access to what will eventually be tens of hours of audio that is genuinely pleasant to listen to and syncs to the text as it plays. I think that is a good deal, but I am biased.

Further out, I would love to build a NativePHP mobile app with offline reading and listening. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Go read something.

My favourite zsh/bash shortcuts (functions and aliases)

EmmaDSCodes — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 21:43:31 +0000

Introduction

My zsh profile is over 1000 lines at this point. A lot of that is functions I asked AI to generate for me, since it's fast, portable, and saves me a ton of typing.

Here's the thing though: the shortcuts that save me the most time aren't the clever ones. They're the dumb ones. Things like clone instead of git clone && cd, or dir instead of mkdir -p && cd. Each one only saves a second or two, but I run them so often that it adds up fast.

These are in no particular order, just the ones I reach for constantly.

Git aliases for common commands

A few one-liners I have set up as plain aliases:

alias gcp="git cherry-pick"
alias git-append="git commit --amend --no-edit -a"

gcp is self-explanatory. git-append amends the last commit with your currently staged (and unstaged, thanks to -a) changes without touching the commit message. Great for fixing up a commit you just made before you push.

Create a branch or switch to it if it already exists

One of my most-used functions. Normally you have to remember whether a branch exists before deciding between git checkout <branch> and git checkout -b <branch>. This just does the right thing either way:

gb() {
  if git rev-parse --verify --quiet "$1" >/dev/null; then
    git checkout "$1"
  else
    git checkout -b "$1"
  fi
}

Nuke all local changes to reset the working tree

When an experiment goes sideways or I just want to throw everything away and start clean, I run nah:

nah() {
  git reset --hard
  git clean -df
  if [ -d ".git/rebase-apply" ] || [ -d ".git/rebase-merge" ]; then
    git rebase --abort
  fi
}

This resets tracked changes, removes untracked files and directories. No confirmation prompt, so use it carefully.

Print recent commits as ready-to-paste cherry-pick commands

Useful when you need to cherry-pick a batch of commits from one branch onto another in order:

logs() {
  if [[ -z "$1" || "$1" =~ [^0-9] ]]; then
    echo "Usage: logs <number_of_commits>"
    return 1
  fi
  git log -n "$1" --reverse --pretty=format:"gcp %h"
}

Run logs 5 and you get the last 5 commits printed oldest to newest, each one already formatted as gcp <hash> (using the alias from above). Copy, paste, done.

Create a directory and cd into it in one step

This is the one I mentioned that barely saves any time per use, but I run it constantlyn and the time save compounds:

dir() { mkdir -p "$1" && cd "$1"; }

Make mkdir always create parent directories

I got tired of hitting "No such file or directory" errors from mkdir when the parent folder didn't exist yet, so I just overrode the default behavior globally:

mkdir() {
  command mkdir -p "$@"
}

Now mkdir always behaves like mkdir -p.

Open nano and auto-create missing parent directories

Same idea as the mkdir override, but for opening a file in nano when the folder it lives in doesn't exist yet:

nano() {
  if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    command nano
  else
    dir=$(dirname "$1")
    if [ ! -d "$dir" ]; then
      mkdir -p "$dir"
    fi
    command nano "$@"
  fi
}

Safely replace a file's contents by moving the original to trash first

Instead of overwriting a file and losing the original, replace moves it to ~/.Trash first and then opens a fresh file with the same name in nano:

replace() {
  if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]; then
    echo "Usage: replace <file>" >&2
    return 1
  fi
  local file="$1"
  if [[ ! -f "$file" ]]; then
    echo "Error: '$file' not found or not a file" >&2
    return 1
  fi
  mkdir -p ~/.Trash
  mv "$file" ~/.Trash/
  nano "$file"
}

But mainly this saves me from runing "rm && nano " which I often do when replacing a file from an AI chat or similar. If you need the original back, it's sitting in ~/.Trash.

Convert HEIC images to JPG or PNG

iPhone photos default to HEIC, which isn't great for sharing or uploading. These two functions batch-convert them using ImageMagick:

heic2jpg() {
  if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Usage: heic2jpg file1.heic [file2.heic ...]"
    return 1
  fi
  for f in "$@"; do
    if [ ! -f "$f" ]; then echo "Not found: $f"; continue; fi
    magick "$f" "${f%.*}.jpg"
  done
}

heic2png() {
  if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Usage: heic2png file1.heic [file2.heic ...]"
    return 1
  fi
  for f in "$@"; do
    if [ ! -f "$f" ]; then echo "Not found: $f"; continue; fi
    magick "$f" "${f%.*}.png"
  done
}

Both take any number of files, so heic2jpg *.heic works fine.

Batch convert images to WebP

For getting images web-ready, this wraps img2webp with sensible defaults and skips anything that isn't actually a file:

img2webp() {
  if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then
    echo "Usage: img2webp <file.png> [file2.png ...] or img2webp *.png"
    return 1
  fi

  for input in "$@"; do
    if [[ ! -f "$input" ]]; then
      echo "Skipping: '$input' is not a file"
      continue
    fi
    local output="${input%.*}.webp"
    echo "Converting: $input → $output"
    command img2webp -lossy -q 80 "$input" -o "$output"
  done
}

Runs at quality 80, lossy, which is a good default for most web use cases. Saves a TON of storage space and bandwidth

A few misc aliases

Small ones I use daily without thinking about them:

alias pest="./vendor/bin/pest"
alias python="python3" # For AI commands expecting it
alias py="python3" # For me when I'm lazy

The pest alias saves typing out the full vendor binary path every time I want to run tests. The python/py aliases exist because plenty of AI-generated commands assume python points to Python 3, and half the time I'm too lazy to type the 3 myself anyway.

Conclusion

None of these are groundbreaking on their own. But that's kind of the point: the small, boring shortcuts you run 50 times a day save you more time overall than the clever ones you run once a week. If you're not already keeping a running file of these for yourself, start one. Every time you catch yourself typing the same thing twice, that's a candidate.

I asked Claude Fable 5 to build a HydePHP site. It invented an airline.

EmmaDSCodes — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:24:23 +0000

Editor's note

Everything after this section was written by an AI. Don't stop reading. I know most of us are bored of AI written content, but I assure you, this one is different. I want you to give it a chance. And I'm about to tell you why.

If you have any interest in AI, you've heard about Claude Fable, a safer version of the Mythos model, which is genuenly blowing users across domains away. I wanted to try Fable out to create a new HydePHP demo website to show off some more advanced features.

It delivered. Not only did it create a stunning website with a unique design that does not have the classic AI generated website feel, but it also created the following blog post, and a high quality promo video uploaded on YouTube you can even hear sound effects that Fable synthesised.

Try out the demo site at nordlys.hydephp.site and let us know your thoughts on Twitter/X. With that said, everything below this text is straight from Fable. Please enjoy!

Emma De Silva, Creator of HydePHP

Letting Claude Drive

HydePHP has had a few demo sites over the years¹ — a recipe blog, a photography
portfolio, a scout troop site. They're fine.² They show the basics. But none of them
really flexes the parts of Hyde we're proudest of: DataCollections feeding Blade
pages, custom components, the docs module living side by side with a blog, all of it
compiling down to plain static HTML.

So we ran an experiment: give Claude Fable 5 the brief and see what comes back. The
brief was short — build a demo that shows off Hyde's advanced features, and don't
give it that generic AI-generated look. What came back is Nordlys Air,
a fictional bush airline flying six routes above the Arctic Circle, complete with a
live split-flap departures board, engineering-drawing aircraft profiles, and a crew
operations manual.

Why a fictional airline?

The clever part of the concept isn't the theme — it's how neatly the theme maps onto
Hyde's page types. An airline has data (routes, aircraft), stories (a flight
journal), and procedures (an operations manual). That's DataCollections, the posts
module, and the documentation module, each doing the job it was designed for instead
of being demoed in isolation:

Every row on the departures board is a YAML file in resources/collections/routes/.
Every fleet spec sheet is a YAML file in resources/collections/fleet/.
The Flight Journal is three Markdown posts with authors, categories, and RSS.
The Operations Manual is the docs module with its automatic sidebar and search — written in-character, down to the Ny-Ålesund radio silence procedures.

Add a fourth aircraft by adding a fourth YAML file. The register page, the homepage
cards, and the navigation update themselves on the next build. That's the pitch for
static site generators in one sentence, and now it's the pitch for the demo too.

The detail we didn't expect: a build-time split-flap board

The centrepiece of the homepage is an animated split-flap departures board, and the
implementation is the most Hyde-flavoured thing on the site. Claude didn't render
the board with JavaScript. It wrote a Blade component, x-flap-text, that splits
each cell's text into character <span>s at build time:

@foreach(DataCollection::yaml('routes')
    ->sortBy(fn ($route) => $route->get('departs')) as $route)
  <x-flap-row :route="$route" />
@endforeach

The full timetable ships in the static HTML — readable with JavaScript disabled,
crawlable, accessible. The site's only script is a two-kilobyte vanilla file that
animates the spans already on the page and runs the hub clock, with
prefers-reduced-motion respected. No framework, no hydration, no build pipeline
beyond php hyde build. It's the static-first philosophy applied to a component
that usually gets thrown at a JavaScript library by reflex.

On not looking AI-generated

We were explicit that the design shouldn't have the interchangeable AI-website look —
the purple gradients, the glassmorphism cards, the Inter-font-and-emoji sameness.
Claude's answer was to pick a specific, researchable design tradition and commit to
it: mid-century printed airline timetables. Cool ice-paper background, petrol ink,
one international-orange accent, ruled lines like a printed schedule, boarding-pass
cards with perforated stubs, and type set in Bricolage Grotesque and IBM Plex Mono.

The aircraft on the site aren't stock photos or generated images — they're original
schematic SVG line drawings, Twin Otter and Dash 8 side profiles with orange
dimension lines, drawn path by path. The route network is a hand-projected polar
azimuthal chart. Both live as reusable Blade components, so the fleet YAML just
says drawing: twin-otter and the page pulls in the right SVG with
<x-dynamic-component>.

What working with Fable 5 was actually like

A few observations from the process, for anyone curious about the workflow:

It verified the framework against the source. Before writing a line of Blade,
it cloned the hyde/hyde skeleton and the documentation repo and checked the real
v2 APIs — DataCollection::yaml(), the navigation menu via app('navigation.main'),
the Author::create() config syntax. The demo isn't written from a fuzzy memory of
Hyde; it's written against Hyde as it ships today. (It also caught that mb_str_pad
is PHP 8.3+ while our composer.json allows 8.2, and wrote the multibyte padding
by hand instead. We noticed.)

It wrote the content, not just the code. The journal posts are actual essays —
a captain's field notes from the midnight sun run to Ny-Ålesund, a love letter to
the 04:10 de-icing crew. The operations manual reads like an operations manual. A
demo site lives or dies on whether the content feels real, and lorem ipsum was never
on the table.

It kept the site honest. The footer of every page says it: Nordlys Air is
fictional. The northern lights are real. And the homepage ends with an "under the
floorboards" section that shows the project's file tree and the actual Blade loop
powering the board — because a demo site's real job is to make you think "oh, I
could build that."

Try it yourself

The full project is available as a standard Hyde repository — clone it, run
composer install && php hyde build, and poke around. Change a route's status in
its YAML file and rebuild to watch the board update. Add an aircraft. Break the
timetable. That's what it's for.

And if you build something with Hyde — with or without an AI copilot — we'd love
to see it.

Footnotes

These are the footnotes added by the human editor to point out issues in the AI text.

Also, the source code is at github.com/hydephp/nordlys-demo and the live preview is at nordlys.hydephp.site.

Technically we just launched the recipe and scout sites a few days before. ↩
Hey! I kinda like them. I mean check out Lemonade Days - it's so summery! ↩

HydePHP Version v2.0 Released

EmmaDSCodes — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:30:56 +0000

Overview

HydePHP v2.0 is now available for download!

After two years of development and refinement, the HydePHP team is thrilled to announce the release of version 2.0. This is our most significant update yet, representing a major evolution of the framework with modernized frontend tooling, a completely redesigned navigation system, and countless improvements to the developer experience.

The new version was unveiled and released live on stage by HydePHP creator Emma De Silva at the Laravel Meetup Stockholm, on October 1st 2025.

What's New in v2.0

Modern Frontend Tooling with Vite

We've replaced Laravel Mix with Vite, bringing you a faster and more modern development experience:

Instant Hot Module Replacement for real-time updates during development
Seamless Blade template integration with the new Vite facade
Tailwind V4 support with easy upgrade tool

Simply run npm run build (replacing the old npm run prod command) to compile your assets.

Redesigned Navigation API

The navigation system has been completely rewritten from the ground up for maximum flexibility:

YAML configuration support for defining navigation items
Extra attributes for custom styling and behavior
Improved Routes facade with Laravel-consistent naming conventions
Natural priority ordering using numeric prefixes in filenames
Enhanced sidebar management with better organization options

Enhanced Asset Management

The new consolidated Asset API provides a more intuitive interface for handling media files:

MediaFile instances with fluent methods like getLink(), getLength(), and getMimeType()
Intelligent caching with CRC32 hashing for improved performance
Automatic validation to prevent missing assets from going unnoticed
Lazy-loaded metadata for optimal resource usage

Better Documentation Features

Documentation pages now benefit from several powerful enhancements:

Alpine.js-powered search with customizable implementation
Blade-based table of contents that's 40x faster than before
Custom heading renderer with improved permalink handling
Colored blockquotes now using Tailwind CSS classes
Dynamic source file links in Markdown documents

Improved Blog Posts

The blog system receives significant upgrades:

Simplified image front matter with new "caption" field
Date prefixes in filenames for automatic publishing dates
Enhanced author system with biographies, avatars, and social media links

Technical Improvements

HydePHP v2.0 brings several important technical upgrades:

PHP 8.4 support and Laravel 11 compatibility
Vite integration with HMR support in realtime compiler
Tailwind CSS v4 with automated upgrade tools
ESM module support for modern JavaScript development
40x faster table of contents generation using Blade components
Lazy-loaded media metadata with in-memory caching
Enhanced data collections with syntax validation

Upgrading to v2.0

We recommend that all users upgrade to take advantage of these improvements. Before upgrading, ensure your application is running HydePHP v1.6 or later (ideally v1.8) to ease the migration process.

Key Migration Steps

Upgrade Tailwind CSS: Run npx @tailwindcss/upgrade to migrate to v4
Update JavaScript: Migrate custom JavaScript to ESM modules
Update Configuration: Update features to use enum values and navigation to array format
Update Build Command: Replace npm run prod with npm run build in your workflow

The upgrade process involves some breaking changes, particularly around the asset system, navigation configuration, and frontend tooling. We've prepared comprehensive documentation to guide you through each step.

For detailed upgrade instructions and a complete migration checklist, please refer to the upgrade guide in our documentation.

Breaking Changes

As a major version release, v2.0 includes several breaking changes:

Tailwind CSS upgraded from v3 to v4
Frontend tooling migrated to ESM modules
Navigation configuration format updated to array-based structure
Asset API methods now return MediaFile instances
Routes facade methods renamed to follow Laravel conventions
Blog author system significantly improved with new configuration format

While these changes require some migration work, they set a solid foundation for future development and provide a much better developer experience overall.

What's Next

With v2.0 released, we're excited about the future of HydePHP. We'll continue to focus on:

Improving documentation and learning resources
Enhancing the developer experience
Building new features based on community feedback
Maintaining compatibility with the latest Laravel and PHP versions

Get Started Today

Ready to upgrade or start a new project with HydePHP v2.0? Install it via Composer:

composer require hyde/framework:^2.0

For new projects, we recommend using the HydePHP installer:

composer create-project hyde/hyde

Resources

Documentation: hydephp.com/docs/2.x
Upgrade Guide: hydephp.com/docs/2.x/upgrade-guide
Full Changelog: github.com/hydephp/develop/releases/tag/v2.0.0
GitHub Repository: github.com/hydephp/hyde
Discord Community: discord.hydephp.com

Thank You

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to this release through code, bug reports, feedback, and community support. HydePHP wouldn't be possible without this amazing community.

We encourage all users to upgrade to this latest version and explore the new features. As always, we welcome your feedback and contributions to make HydePHP even better. Please report any issues you find on GitHub, and share your thoughts on Twitter/X using the hashtag #HydePHP or by tagging us at @HydeFramework.

Happy building with HydePHP v2.0!

Hackathon: HydePHP is Joining ODHack #14

EmmaDSCodes — Wed, 28 May 2025 19:30:04 +0000

Are you ready to build something amazing?

We're excited to announce that HydePHP is officially participating in ODHack #14, running from May 28 to June 4, 2025! This is a fantastic opportunity for developers of all skill levels to contribute to our open-source static site generator and help shape the future of modern web development.

What is ODHack #14?

ODHack is OnlyDust's monthly hackathon that connects developers with meaningful open-source projects. It's more than just a coding competition – it's a chance to contribute to real-world projects, build your developer portfolio, and connect with a thriving community of passionate developers from around the globe.

With over 1,571 issues across 547 repositories, ODHack #14 offers something for everyone, whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting your open-source journey.

Why Contribute to HydePHP?

HydePHP is a powerful, elegant static site generator built with PHP that makes creating beautiful, fast websites a breeze. By contributing to HydePHP during ODHack #14, you'll be:

Working on cutting-edge technology: Help improve a modern static site generator that's used by developers worldwide
Making a real impact: Your contributions will directly benefit the HydePHP community and ecosystem
Building valuable skills: Gain experience with PHP, Laravel ecosystem tools, and modern web development practices
Joining a welcoming community: Our maintainers are committed to helping contributors succeed

What's in Store for Contributors

We've prepared an exciting mix of contribution opportunities specifically for ODHack #14:

Good First Issues
Perfect for newcomers or those new to HydePHP! We have several beginner-friendly issues including:

Supporting "excerpt" as an alias for "description" in blog post schema
Adding namespaced functions for helper methods
Fixing UI glitches and improving user experience

Beta Testing HydePHP v2.0
Here's something special – HydePHP v2.0 is launching next month, and we need your help testing it! Contributors will get exclusive early access to:

Test new features and provide feedback
Report bugs and help us polish the release
Be among the first to experience the next generation of HydePHP

Creative Showcase Projects
Let your creativity shine! We're looking for contributors to build impressive demo websites using HydePHP v2.0. The best demos will be:

Featured on the official HydePHP website
Used to showcase the framework's capabilities
A source of valuable feedback for our v2.0 release

Featured Issues to Get You Started

We've tagged several issues specifically for ODHack #14 participants. You can find them in the HydePHP repository with the ODHack14 label.

Each issue includes detailed descriptions, acceptance criteria, and guidance to help you get started quickly.

How to Get Involved

Ready to join the fun? Here's how to participate:

Register for ODHack #14 at contribute.onlydust.com
Browse HydePHP issues tagged with ODHack14
Apply to work on issues that match your interests and skill level
Join our community - Connect with other contributors and maintainers
Start contributing - Submit your pull requests and make your mark!

Join Our Community

Contributing to open source is more rewarding when you're part of a supportive community. Join us on:

GitHub: Follow our repository and engage with issues
Discussions: Share ideas and get help from maintainers and fellow contributors
Discord: Real-time chat with the HydePHP community

Ready to Build Something Amazing?

Whether you're looking to fix your first bug, test cutting-edge features, or create stunning demo sites, HydePHP's participation in ODHack #14 offers the perfect opportunity to dive into open source development.

The hackathon runs until June 4th, giving you a full week to make meaningful contributions, learn new skills, and connect with developers worldwide. Every contribution matters, no matter how big or small!

Join ODHack #14 now and let's build the future of static site generation together. We can't wait to see what you'll create with HydePHP!

Happy coding, and welcome to the HydePHP community! 🚀

Demystifying the TailwindCSS `bg-current` utility class

EmmaDSCodes — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 18:54:00 +0000

The bg-current utility class in TailwindCSS sets the background color of an element to the current text color. This means that the background will inherit the color defined by the text-color property of the element or its parent.

How It Works:

Inheritance: If you have a parent element with a specific text color (e.g., text-gray-700), using bg-current on a child element will make the background of that child element the same color as the text color of the parent.
Dynamic: This is particularly useful for creating components that need to adapt to different themes or color schemes without hardcoding specific colors. For example, if you switch from light mode to dark mode, the background will automatically change to match the new text color.

Example:

<div class="text-blue-500">
    <span class="bg-current">This background is blue!</span>
</div>

In this example, the background of the <span> will be blue because it inherits the text color from the parent <div>.

Benefits:

Consistency: Ensures that the background color is always consistent with the text color, which can be particularly useful for icons or buttons.
Ease of Use: Reduces the need to define multiple color classes for different states or themes, simplifying the styling process.

Using bg-current is a great way to maintain visual harmony in your design while leveraging Tailwind's utility-first approach.

Laravel Nightwatch: The Future of Laravel Application Monitoring Revealed at Laracon AU

EmmaDSCodes — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 10:24:41 +0000

Laravel's ecosystem continues to expand with the announcement of Laravel Nightwatch at Laracon AU - a sophisticated monitoring platform specifically engineered for Laravel applications. Set for early access in Q1 2025, Nightwatch promises to revolutionize how developers monitor and maintain their Laravel applications.

A New Era of Laravel Monitoring

Laravel Nightwatch represents a significant advancement in application monitoring, developed by the same team behind Laravel Cloud, Forge, Vapor, and Nova. This platform stands out by offering context-aware monitoring that understands Laravel's internal workings, providing insights that generic monitoring solutions simply cannot match.

Key Features

Zero-Configuration Monitoring: Nightwatch automatically detects and tracks application activities without complex setup procedures
Intelligent Log Management: Advanced log ingestion and analysis specifically optimized for Laravel applications
Real-Time Performance Tracking: Immediate insights into application performance metrics
Automated Alert System: Smart notifications for critical issues
Cross-Platform Compatibility: Works seamlessly with all hosting platforms including Laravel Cloud, Forge, Vapor, and custom infrastructure

Why Nightwatch Matters

Traditional monitoring solutions often require developers to piece together multiple tools and wade through endless logs to understand their application's health. Nightwatch aims to eliminate this complexity by providing a unified, Laravel-focused monitoring solution that delivers meaningful insights out of the box.

Availability and Pricing

While early access is scheduled for Q1 2025, Laravel has confirmed they're developing a pricing structure that will accommodate teams of all sizes - from individual developers to enterprise organizations. This commitment to accessibility ensures that comprehensive application monitoring won't be limited to just large-scale operations.

Looking Forward

The introduction of Nightwatch marks another milestone in Laravel's journey to provide developers with best-in-class tools for building and maintaining web applications. As Taylor Otwell, Laravel's creator, puts it: "We're not here to add another dashboard to your toolkit — we're here to redefine how you understand your Laravel application."

Getting Started

Interested developers can join the waitlist at nightwatch.laravel.com to be among the first to experience Laravel Nightwatch when it launches in early 2025.

Stay tuned for more updates as we approach the early access release of Laravel Nightwatch in 2025.

New `@bool` Blade directive in Laravel!

EmmaDSCodes — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 16:38:32 +0000

The new `@bool` Blade directive

Laravel's Blade templating engine is getting a handy new feature: the @bool directive. This allows you to directly print boolean values into strings or use them in object construction, making your JavaScript integrations cleaner and more efficient.

Here's how you can use it:

<script>
    let config = {
        isActive: @bool($isActive),
        hasAccess: @bool($hasAccess)
    };
</script>

When compiled, this Blade code will output clean JavaScript:

<script>
    let config = {
        isActive: true,
        hasAccess: false
    };
</script>

Use cases

The @bool directive is particularly useful in several scenarios:

JavaScript configuration objects
Alpine.js data binding
HTML attributes requiring boolean values

For instance, with Bootstrap:

<button aria-haspopup="@bool($hasPopup)" aria-expanded="@bool($isExpanded)">
    Dropdown button
</button>

Availability & PR

While this feature isn't released yet, it's expected to be available soon. Keep an eye on Laravel's official channels for the announcement. In the meantime, check out the merged PR on GitHub! https://github.com/laravel/framework/pull/53179

Conclusion

The @bool directive is a small but powerful addition to Blade that will make working with boolean values in your templates much more convenient.

If any part of this post was helpful, please let me know and give me a follow on Twitter/X where I'm @CodeWithCaen

Quick Tip: Git Undo Commands

EmmaDSCodes — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 19:38:49 +0000

To undo changes in Git, you can use the following commands, depending on what you want to undo:

Method 1: Undo uncommitted changes in the working directory:

git checkout -- <file>

Method 2: Unstage a staged file:

git reset <file>

Method 3: Undo the last commit but keep changes:

git reset --soft HEAD~1

Method 4: Undo the last commit and discard changes:

git reset --hard HEAD~1

Bonus: Reset to the remote tracking branch

git reset --hard origin/$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)

Choose the command based on your requirement. Always be cautious with --hard as it irreversibly deletes changes.

Support HydePHP and Double Your Impact!

EmmaDSCodes — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 19:36:36 +0000

Double Your Donation to HydePHP!

We're excited to share an opportunity to support HydePHP and make your contribution go even further!

Simon Hamp (@simonhamp) has launched a generous matching donation campaign for open-source projects. Here's how you can participate and help HydePHP:

Donate any amount to HydePHP's OpenCollective.
Send your donation receipt to Simon Hamp.
Simon will match your donation up to $10!

This is a fantastic chance to double your impact and support the ongoing development of HydePHP, the Laravel-based static site generator.

Why Support HydePHP?

Your contributions help cover hosting costs, development tools, and enable us to create more resources for the community. Every donation, no matter the size, makes a difference.

Ready to Support HydePHP and Open Source?

Simon's campaign aims to raise $2,000 for 100 open-source projects. Let's make sure HydePHP is one of them! Donate today and help us continue improving the HydePHP experience for everyone.

Thank you for your support and for being part of the HydePHP community!

Escape the Drama: Why HydePHP is Your WordPress Alternative

EmmaDSCodes — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 22:49:55 +0000

The WordPress Drama

As the WordPress ecosystem faces unprecedented turmoil, many developers and site owners are reconsidering their platform choices. The recent conflict between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine has highlighted issues of control, contribution, and commercialization within the WordPress community. This drama serves as a wake-up call: it's time to explore alternatives that prioritize simplicity, independence, and developer empowerment.

Enter HydePHP: A Breath of Fresh Air

HydePHP emerges as a compelling alternative for those seeking to break free from the complexities and controversies of WordPress. Let's explore why HydePHP might be the perfect solution for your next project.

1. Content-First Philosophy

HydePHP embraces a content-first approach, allowing you to focus on what matters most: your writing. With Markdown support, you can create blog posts, documentation pages, and static HTML pages without getting bogged down in complex markup or plugin configurations.

2. Simplicity Without Sacrifice

Unlike WordPress's steep learning curve and plugin dependencies, HydePHP offers a streamlined development experience. It combines a framework, static site builder, and starter template into one cohesive package. This means you can get started quickly without sacrificing the ability to customize your site as your needs evolve.

3. Lightning-Fast Performance

As a static site generator, HydePHP produces websites that are inherently fast and scalable. By eliminating the need for databases and server-side rendering, your site can be served from global CDNs, resulting in blazing-fast load times and improved user experience.

4. Enhanced Security and Stability

With no database to maintain or complex backend to secure, HydePHP sites are significantly less vulnerable to common web attacks. This not only improves your site's security but also reduces the ongoing maintenance burden.

5. Cost-Effective Hosting

Static sites are incredibly cheap to host, with many providers offering free options. This can lead to substantial cost savings compared to traditional WordPress hosting, especially as your site scales.

6. Developer-Friendly Environment

Built on Laravel and using familiar tools like Blade and TailwindCSS, HydePHP provides a modern, enjoyable development experience. It strikes a balance between ease of use for beginners and flexibility for advanced users.

7. No Vendor Lock-In

Unlike the WordPress ecosystem, where your content can become entangled with themes and plugins, HydePHP keeps your content separate and portable. This gives you the freedom to evolve your site or even migrate to a different platform in the future.

Making the Switch

Transitioning from WordPress to HydePHP is straightforward:

Install HydePHP using Composer: composer create-project hyde/hyde
Migrate your content to Markdown files
Customize your templates and styles as needed
Build and deploy your static site

Conclusion

As the WordPress drama unfolds, it's clear that developers and content creators need alternatives that offer simplicity, speed, and independence. HydePHP provides all these benefits while maintaining the flexibility to grow with your needs.

By choosing HydePHP, you're not just selecting a tool; you're embracing a philosophy of content-first development, free from the complexities and controversies that can plague larger ecosystems. Give HydePHP a try for your next project, and experience the joy of building websites without the drama.

Ready to get started? Check out the HydePHP documentation and join a community focused on empowering developers and content creators alike.

Quick Tip: How To Use Blue Links in Tailwind Typography (Prose)

EmmaDSCodes — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 11:48:48 +0000

The Tailwind Typography plugin (that adds the .prose class) comes with a very opinionated link style. If you want the more classic one, it's easy to fix in the config. You can also go bold and use any other color of course. I'm going with Indigo for a sweet blue link.

theme: {
    extend: {
        fontFamily: {
            sans: ['Inter var', ...defaultTheme.fontFamily.sans],
        },
        typography: (theme) => ({
            DEFAULT: {
                css: {
                    a: {
                        color: theme('colors.indigo.600'),
                        textDecoration: 'none',
                        '&:hover': {
                            color: theme('colors.indigo.500'),
                        },
                    },
                },
            },
        }),
    },
},

And that's it!

DEV Community: EmmaDSCodes

Building Abridged Shelf - Free shorter classic stories

Making classics more accessible

The abridgment process

The audiobooks

How the site is actually built

Working with agents

Laravel Cloud

What's next

My favourite zsh/bash shortcuts (functions and aliases)

Introduction

Git aliases for common commands

Create a branch or switch to it if it already exists

Nuke all local changes to reset the working tree

Print recent commits as ready-to-paste cherry-pick commands

Create a directory and cd into it in one step

Make mkdir always create parent directories

Open nano and auto-create missing parent directories

Safely replace a file's contents by moving the original to trash first

Convert HEIC images to JPG or PNG

Batch convert images to WebP

A few misc aliases

Conclusion

I asked Claude Fable 5 to build a HydePHP site. It invented an airline.

Editor's note

Letting Claude Drive

Why a fictional airline?

The detail we didn't expect: a build-time split-flap board

On not looking AI-generated

What working with Fable 5 was actually like

Try it yourself

Footnotes

HydePHP Version v2.0 Released

Overview

What's New in v2.0

Modern Frontend Tooling with Vite

Redesigned Navigation API

Enhanced Asset Management

Better Documentation Features

Improved Blog Posts

Technical Improvements

Upgrading to v2.0

Key Migration Steps

Breaking Changes

What's Next

Get Started Today

Resources

Thank You

Hackathon: HydePHP is Joining ODHack #14

Are you ready to build something amazing?

What is ODHack #14?

Why Contribute to HydePHP?

What's in Store for Contributors

How to Get Involved

Join Our Community

Ready to Build Something Amazing?

Demystifying the TailwindCSS `bg-current` utility class

How It Works:

Example:

Benefits:

Laravel Nightwatch: The Future of Laravel Application Monitoring Revealed at Laracon AU

A New Era of Laravel Monitoring

Key Features

Why Nightwatch Matters

Availability and Pricing

Looking Forward

Getting Started

New `@bool` Blade directive in Laravel!

The new @bool Blade directive

Use cases

Availability & PR

Conclusion

Quick Tip: Git Undo Commands

Support HydePHP and Double Your Impact!

Double Your Donation to HydePHP!

Why Support HydePHP?

Ready to Support HydePHP and Open Source?

Escape the Drama: Why HydePHP is Your WordPress Alternative

The WordPress Drama

Enter HydePHP: A Breath of Fresh Air

The new `@bool` Blade directive