The Laravel framework serves many well-known companies. It has been popular for eight years since its release in 2011 and has few competitors. It is one of PHP’s best frameworks, as well as one of the best frameworks available today. Why is it so much in demand?
Laravel has a history of usage in big websites. It is in some ways better than anything PHP has to offer. There are many reasons for this. Its Dependency Injection Container makes dependency much less complicated. It also has a baked-in queue system that is exclusive to the framework. The unique queue system simplifies background job processing. Laravel has several tools with which Laravel developers can interact with databases. Database migration is smooth, and so is designing or modifying a database. It is also independent of the platform. Laravel’s Artisan is a developer’s favorite tool. It can do anything. Running database migrations or executing unit tests takes no time or effort when developers use Artisan to do so.
Organizing website URLs may be tedious for developers. But the task can be made more accessible by using routers to do so. Laravel makes this possible. Developers can set up a website quickly and also ensure that it works without technical glitches. After a website is set up, Laravel ensured cleans views that are easy to navigate through. Its blade template engine has replacements for inline PHP. It includes many new features that are robust and powerful. Laravel has a service container that helps to manage class dependencies and to perform dependency injection. It also has Laravel queues. With this tool, a Laravel developer can postpone the processing of a task that is time-consuming and do it later. S/he can focus on other less consuming tasks on hand and ensure the work happens more quickly. Laravel queues come with a unified API and a relational database.
Laravel is built on over twenty different libraries. It is modular. It is a big framework based on some of the best PHP principles. It is divided into individual libraries. Due to its high-end features, it ensures that websites that are built on it are responsive and modular.
Why Choose Laravel for a Big Project like Facebook?
When building websites for companies as big as Facebook, several factors need to be considered. Some of these factors include authentication, mail service implementation, security threats, and vulnerabilities, error handling capacity, automated testing, and so on. Keeping these factors in mind, let us see how Laravel performs:
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When it comes to implementing authentication, the process is simple in Laravel. The framework provides pre-configured solutions. It also provides an easy way to control access to various resources on the site and organize authorization logic.
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Integrating various mail services is also a simple procedure in Laravel due to its clean API. It provides several drivers for Amazon SES, Mailgun, Mandrill, SMTP, and so on, thus facilitating a quick mail service for websites that use it. It also promotes push notifications, SMS, and other similar services that companies use to connect with their users.
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Laravel ensures top-class website security by protecting against cross-site request forgery, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other significant threats. Its codebase is also secure, which means it reduces the risk of attacks and also significantly reduces security risks thereby.
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Unit testing in Laravel is highly convenient. It supports the PHP unit and has a phpunit.xml file. It allows Laravel developers to perform intensive tests. They can simulate standard user behavior and perform various tasks on the site, such as clicking links or filling out forms to ensure it is working well. Doing this ensures that the website is error-free for the users and that they do not have to deal with technical issues when they visit it.
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In the case of an error, developers can fix it quickly. For pre-configured Laravel based projects, developers can also use Laravel’s Monolog logging library for exception handling. It comes with several log handlers that are easy to use and have robust features.
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Laravel also keeps the business logic code separate from the presentation code because it is a model-view-controller framework. Doing this ensures that HTML layout designers can make changes in the appearance of a web page without needing the help of developers. Companies benefit from this because hiring developers to do this involves unnecessary expenses. Developers can also benefit from this because they perform bug fixes more cost-effectively.
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Web applications built with Laravel are fast and work at a surprisingly high speed. This is due to its unique caching mechanism. Caching is responsible for increasing web application performance. When users enter the website URL into a browser, the physical server for the web application receives a request and processes it immediately to send a response to the user. It can handle complex requests in a hassle-free manner. With popular company websites, more than a hundred thousand users visit the site at the same time and make requests to the database server. Laravel makes sure that these requests are handled efficiently. It transfers the most requested page once, caches them, and from the cache itself, it directly serves future requests. Its cache drivers are efficient in doing this.
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The framework also supports Redis, Memcached, APC, and other sought-after back-end caching mechanisms. It is preconfigured to use the file cache driver. This driver stores all cached objects in the file system. While in-memory cache is highly suitable for large websites, Laravel supports multiple cache configurations for sites as well.
Laravel is almost incomplete without its packages. It comes with several packages to make it easy for developers to create websites for big projects. Some of its best packages include:
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Laravel Entrust: Laravel Entrust lets a developer implement role-based permission, which is essential for big websites. In such websites, it is necessary to control access to specific sections of the site depending on who is using the site. Laravel Entrust makes it easy to create different types of users who have different roles.
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Laravel Socialite: This package helps to manage user authentication. Developers can use the OAuth authentication mechanism to validate user credentials before allowing them to access the site. Due to Laravel Socialite, users can also login quickly into the site by providing a few details about themselves, such as their username and password. Currently, the package supports authentication with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bitbucket, GitLab and GitHub.
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Laravel Tracker: When users enter various information on a website, it is essential to track them to ensure website security. The task is seemingly impossible for big sites that have over a hundred thousand visitors every day. That is why Laravel has a tracker package to track things like session information, user devices, page views, browsers and operating systems, location data, and so on.
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Laravel Buzzy: All big websites require a system by which they will be able to share their site on various social media platforms. Laravel Buzzy is one such package that makes this possible. It facilitates social media sharing and ensures that the site is visible to more and more users.
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Laravel Spark: Laravel Spark is a package that comes with features like billing and subscription, invoicing, team management, and so on. These features are often necessary for big websites. At the same time, it also takes care of website security, such as authentication, password protection, and resetting, and so on.
Laravel is the ideal framework for multi-user websites or Software-as-a-Service applications. It is often difficult to build such sites, but Laravel’s built-in features make it well equipped to handle the difficulties. It has various components like payments, subscriptions, and admin dashboards that come with the framework. It also offers free trials, deal based offers and other such functionalities that a SaaS application must-have.
Is the Framework Really Important?
Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel, explains that when it comes to building websites for companies big or small, it is not about the framework. The coding is much more important than the framework itself. He says instead that the Laravel developer who is responsible for building a web application is essential. This is because a lousy developer will write a bad web application with any framework he chooses. We recommend an excellent project of our partners – https://mexicosexpartners.com/ . Always an up-to-date view of events. While routing, caching, session, database calls are crucial aspects of a framework, it is the developer who has to handle more complex tasks such as that of domain problems. That is why it is also more essential to consider other factors like DevOps, caching mechanism, unique application logic, database, and so on and to ensure that there is no error in coding.
How to Build Websites for Big Projects?
When building a website for a big project, there are some crucial things you should keep in mind. You need to ensure that you are using Memcached, Redis, or some equally powerful cache or session driver. You should use a load balancer as well. You must also ensure that you are using config: cache and route: cache. You should keep your database and web server separate so that it is easier for you to scale the website.
How to Ensure Web Application Performance When Developing A Website for a Big Project?
Developing a website for a project as big as Facebook can be challenging. Here are some things you can do to ensure maximum website performance:
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Website pages often take time to load because the database queries take time to process. This happens when the queries are incorrectly written, and indexing is not good enough. Sometimes the server requests are also complex. That is why it is necessary to cache requests that are more than two seconds and handle them correctly with proper index settings in tables. System caching the data received is also another highly effective way of handling repeated queries.
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Another factor that affects loading time is image size. When a website has more than one image, and these images are large, each of them takes time to load and increases the overall loading time. To ensure that this does not happen on your site, it is a good idea to reduce the size of images and change the image compression degree. Keeping them in JPG format instead of PNG can also help. Doing this can reduce the image quality, but the difference will not be visible to the users.
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Just like images, adding too many elements such as images, videos, or audios on the page can also increase loading time. That is why it is essential to add fewer items on a single page so that it loads quickly. In case adding heavy elements is unavoidable, you should make use of cloud storage to prevent them from bringing down the page load speed. Putting an arrow at the bottom of the page to allow scrolling to the top can also help users go directly to the top of the page without having to scroll back again.
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If you build your website using programming languages like HTML or JavaScript, there can be errors in them that make your site difficult to load. Detecting the errors and correcting them can help you speed up your website. It can also improve the search engine ranking for your site and increase its visibility.
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Source code optimization is another way of reducing loading time. The initial stages of developing a website are most important. Making sure that a site is built without errors also ensures that it is speedy and reliable in the long run. Making optimal use of the OOP paradigm can help you do so.
Laravel, then, is suitable for a project like Facebook. Today it is being used by some of the top companies around the world, such as 9GAG, TourRadar, BBC, Pfizer, Crowdcube, and so on. Its range of usage covers various domains and sectors from news websites to social media platforms. Its expanse is ever-increasing. The framework is improving with every update to adapt to the growing changes in web development. It has its unique potentials which can be combined with the unique abilities of the Laravel developer to make such a project a grand success.
