Hit 2,000 users 🎉 Laradir source code accessible to GitHub Sponsors

Wow! 2,000 registered users!

I really didn't think we'd hit that so soon. Thank you everyone! 🥹

When I acquired the site back in November, there were just shy of 800 users registered. So this is wild growth from my point of view.

I honestly don't even know what to say about it 😱

I think it's a clear sign that Laravel developers and teams have wanted and needed a platform like this for a long time. Well it's here, and it's here to stay.

I'm working on the December round-up post, but this was just too big of a milestone to leave for that. So I hope you'll celebrate with me today.

A Special Surprise

For a while I've been toying with the idea of completely open-sourcing a product and seeing what happens. Laradir is something of the perfect candidate for this because the value in the platform is really in the data not the code. The code is really just a commodity.

That said, this code I call 'Laradir' is a pretty neat app, in my opinion. It's a TALL-stack app, of course! For those that don't know what that means, it's Tailwind, Alpine.js, Livewire and Laravel.

If you don't know what any of those are, you need to climb out from under that rock (but make sure you have plenty of water, it's getting hot out here). 🪨

It also uses FilamentPHP in a few places throughout the platform, but most notably for a minimal admin interface.

Again for the rock-dwellers: Filament is an awesome UI library built on top of Livewire that leverages the power of Laravel to the full. It makes my life a lot easier!

As Laradir hit this awesome 2,000 registered users milestone, I wanted to do something special. Yes, I may have gone a little crazy. But lets ignore questions of my mental state for a second and reckon with this: The whole Laradir codebase is source-accessible for just $20.

That's right! You can get access to all the source code to Laradir right now via GitHub Sponsors for just $20. (You'll get a bunch of other goodies too).

This could be a great way to dive into a production-ready Laravel app and learn how it's done by someone who's been doing this a long time (and still makes tons of mistakes!)

You'll also be able to PR changes back if that's your jam, and raise issues directly against the codebase.

Plus that sponsorship will go a huge way into helping keep Laradir alive, which might let you sleep a little better at night knowing that you're supporting a platform that is helping thousands of Laravel engineers to get their profiles out there.

😵

Yes. I know. A whole Laravel app for $20. But note this is not "open source" (yet)—it's proprietary software and you're not licensed to re-sell it.

It's also not a general-purpose tool that's been set up for easy re-branding or re-skinning. It will need a lot of adapting.

But I am really keen to make it fully open source. And for that I have a target! If we can get to $2,500, I'll fully open source (MIT license) the codebase and make it open to everyone. Then you can do whatever you want with it.

Honestly, I'm a bit scared by this. Maybe I've been reading too many new year's philosophy posts about getting out of my comfort zone. Whatever the case, I hope it's a beneficial experience for you and that you find it worthy of these few dollars.

Whatever you think, why not come see how the sausage gets made? ⟶