HOW I MET LARAGON

In 2017, I bought a Laravel course on Udemy and followed through on setting up Laravel on my local machine using Xampp and it was not long before I began to run into issues. I kept googling for answers for one error after the other.

Because I was naïve and inexperienced in Software Development, little did I know that most of my problems were windows related. Not until the instructor pointed it out to me that my issues were not with my code but my machine.

It was not long after his remarks, my passion died progressively until I eventually gave up on the course.

A few months later, I found a newly released Laravel course again and I previewed it. In the preview, I discovered that the instructor was using a different development environment and immediately, I purchased the course and followed it religiously and earned my first certificate in Laravel and built a blog and forum at the end of it.

This was possible because the instructor used Laragon which save me from the stress that windows and Xampp were giving me at the beginning.

Fast forward to date, I have built several applications with Laravel, Django, and NodeJs courtesy of LARAGON.

WHAT IS LARAGON

Laragon is a portable yet powerful, universal development environment for Apache, Nginx, MariaDB, PHP, Node.Js, Python, Go, Redis, Memcached, and other frameworks and programming languages.

On Laragon's website, they wrote: -

"Laragon is a portable, isolated, fast, and powerful universal development environment for PHP, NodeJS, Python, Java, Go, and Ruby. It is fast, lightweight, easy to use, and easy to extend."

True to their words, LARAGON is Powerful💪.

Please Note that Laragon is essentially a WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and is currently unavailable to Mac and Linus users.

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES

Before the emergence of Laragon, there were tons of development environments or tools used by programmers all over the world prominent amongst which were XAMPP, WAMPSERVER, AMPPS, MAMP, HOMESTEAD et cetera.

To date, most of these platforms are still wonderful applications for local development. However, the sophistication, complication, and learning curve that comes with them have remained a pain in the ass for most developers, especially newbies.

Thanks to the arrival of Laragon 🤗, which laid to rest most of these challenges.

WHY CHOOSE LARAGON

An excellent product advertises itself and so does Laragon. All thanks to the developers who developed this application and turned sophistication into simplicity.

Whether you are a newbie or an experienced programmer, below are compelling reasons why you should choose Laragon for your next Web Development Project.

📍Universality

📍Simplicity

📍Speed

📍Modularity and extensibility

📍Out-of-the-box pretty Url

📍Ease of Use

📍Modern, Portable, and Flexible

📍Email Automation

Stay with me, as I explain each of these in greater detail:

⭐Universality – Build all your applications from one platform on your local machine. Laragon enables you to build raw PHP, Python, JavaScript, Java, and Go applications or build WordPress, Laravel, Django, NodeJS, and Java Applications without battling with configurations, recurring, annoying warnings, and errors.

⭐Simplicity – Laragon is simple to set up and use. No sophisticated configuration is needed. It is more like a plug-and-play device.

⭐Speed – Laragon is blazing fast. It does not lag or slack when used for development. It is very lightweight and thus speedily loads all applications.

⭐Modularity & Extensibility – Yes, of course, Laragon is modular and extensible. You can add your preferred database engine. Though it comes with MariaDB and Heidi SQL by default, you can switch to MySQL and phpMyAdmin, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB.

You can switch to different versions of PHP or Java et cetera or even different versions of the database engines.

⭐Out-of-the-box pretty Url – Laragon gives you a pretty url out of the box. No more http:/Localhost:8000 or http:127.0.0.1, Just create your "new-app" and visit http://new-app.test on your browser to view your app. Yes, Laragon does all the magic under the hooks.

Interestingly, these http:/Localhost:8000 or http:127.0.0.1 still work if you prefer to use them.

But the beauty of pretty URLs is that you can use them to convince a client or potential client who wouldn't even understand that the application is not yet hosted.

⭐Ease of use – You can migrate to Laragon in under 10 minutes. Creating a new application takes just 2 clicks and 2 minutes. You don't need back-and-forth visits to documentation as 5 minutes is enough to get started and start creating your applications. Viewing your root folder is just a click away. Stay tuned for my next article which will be on - Setting up Laragon on your local machine.

⭐Modern, Portable, and Flexible – Laragon is Containerized, Isolated and portable, flexible, and customizable. You can enable or disable extensions in 2 clicks. It comes with an inbuilt terminal. With Laragon, you can easily move your projects between your local machines without a headache.

⭐Email Automation – Laragon empowers you to send or automate emails with just one line of code and the emails wouldn't be marked as spam by the recipients. The same thing it does while creating an application for you.

IN A NUTSHELL ❤️❤️❤️

Indeed, Laragon is a true definition of a modern development tool kit that I think every developer should know about or use. It has simplified my web development experience and I felt it would be nice to share my experience and the beauty of this elegant tool with others.

Though my aim is not for you to abandon XAMPP, WAMPSERVER, AMPPS, or whatever you have been using for your local development, I strongly feel that a lot of people out there do not know about this great tool which is what influenced my decision to author this piece.

However, if these reasons are not convincing or compelling enough for you to give it a trial, then you may still be caught in fear of the unknown. But not to worry, in my next article, I will hold your hands and take you through the process of setting up Laragon on your machine so that we can all see how easy and beautiful it is, building with Laragon.

Thank you for taking the time to read this piece.

Until I come your way again tomorrow.

Stay tuned and stay blessed.

D'Miraculous

I am a Smart Solutions Developer, Techpreneur, Project Manager, and Writer with over 12 years of experience spanning Engineering, Technology and Software Development.

Founder of Techpira Innovations