Roadmap
Everything you need to go from "I know some PHP" to building and deploying real Laravel applications, in the order that makes sense. Tick off each step as you learn it.
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Laravel is PHP. Get comfortable with these first and everything later is easier.
Variables, arrays, functions, loops and forms. If these are new, follow the PHP roadmap first.
Classes, interfaces, traits, namespaces and type hints. Laravel code is all classes.
Install packages, understand composer.json, autoloading (PSR-4) and semantic versions.
Requests, responses, methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), status codes, headers and cookies.
Commit, branch, merge and push. Every Laravel team uses Git, and so does every deployment.
The core of every Laravel app: from a URL to a page.
Create a project, run it locally, and learn what lives in app/, routes/, resources/, config/ and database/.
Route methods, parameters, named routes, groups and route model binding.
Move logic out of routes: resource controllers, single-action controllers and dependency injection.
Layouts, components, slots, loops and conditionals, and why {{ }} escapes output.
Read input, validate it with rules and form requests, and show errors in the form.
Keep secrets in .env, read settings with config(), and never commit the .env file.
Most Laravel work is reading and writing data. Learn it well.
Tables, keys, SELECT with WHERE and JOIN, indexes. Eloquent writes SQL for you, but you still need to read it.
Version your database schema, and fill it with test data using factories and seeders.
Create, read, update and delete with models; fillable fields, casts, scopes and accessors.
One-to-many, many-to-many and polymorphic relationships, and querying through them.
Use with() to load related models in one query. The most common Laravel performance bug.
Write complex queries, paginate results, and keep related writes safe in a transaction.
The features almost every app needs.
Log in, register, reset passwords and verify emails with a starter kit, and understand what it does.
Run code before and after requests: auth, rate limiting, locale, maintenance checks.
Validate uploads, store them on disks (local, public, S3) and serve them safely.
Send emails with Mailables, and notify users by mail, database or other channels.
API routes, JSON resources, status codes, and token authentication with Sanctum.
Interactive pages without writing a separate SPA (Livewire), or with Vue / React (Inertia). Pick one.
What separates a junior from a mid-level Laravel developer.
How Laravel builds your classes, binding interfaces to implementations, and facades.
Send emails and process uploads in the background; retries, failed jobs and workers.
Decouple your code: fire an event once and let several listeners react to it.
Run commands every minute, hour or day with one cron entry on the server.
Cache slow queries and pages, and use Redis for cache, sessions and queues.
Ship changes without fear of breaking what already works.
Test pages, forms and APIs with Pest or PHPUnit, using an in-memory database and fakes.
Read stack traces and logs, use dd() and dump(), and inspect queries and requests.
Format code with Pint and catch bugs before running them with Larastan (PHPStan).
CSRF, mass assignment, SQL injection, XSS, hashing passwords and rate limiting: what Laravel does for you and what it doesn't.
An app only counts once people can use it.
APP_DEBUG=false, caching config, routes and views, running migrations, and storage links.
Deploy to cPanel shared hosting or a VPS with Nginx and PHP-FPM, or use a managed platform.
Run the same PHP, MySQL and Redis versions as production on any computer.
Run your tests automatically on every push with GitHub Actions.
Turn what you learned into proof that you can do the job.
A real app (a booking system, a shop, a blog with an admin) on GitHub with a live link and tests.
Practise explaining the request lifecycle, Eloquent, queues and testing in your own words.
List your projects with numbers (users, speed, tests) and keep it to one or two pages.
Ask the community. Mention the step you are on and what you tried.
Share this roadmap with someone who is starting out, and follow it together.
With PHP basics already in place, most people can build simple Laravel apps in 4 to 8 weeks and become job-ready in 4 to 8 months of regular practice. Building real projects matters more than the hours.
Yes. Laravel is a PHP framework, so you need variables, arrays, functions and especially classes and namespaces. Without them, Laravel feels like magic and errors are hard to fix.
Yes. Laravel is the most popular PHP framework, PHP still runs a large part of the web, and companies keep hiring Laravel developers for web apps, APIs and SaaS products.
Pick Livewire if you prefer to stay in PHP and Blade; pick Inertia if you already know Vue or React. Both are good. Learn one well before trying the other.
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