Laravel Boilerplate Laravel Package

Getting Started

Treat this as a starter kit, not a drop-in package — you clone the repo and own the resulting application. Day one looks like a normal Laravel bootstrap, not a composer require.

1. Bring it up locally
   • git clone, then composer install and npm install.
   • Copy .env.example to .env, set DB_* and APP_URL, then php artisan key:generate.
   • php artisan migrate --seed (the seeders create the admin user, roles, permissions, and settings rows).
   • Build assets: npm run dev (or npm run watch while working).
   • Find the seeded admin credentials in database/seeds/UsersTableSeeder.php (or the equivalent seeder) before trying to log in.
2. Orient yourself in the tree
   • routes/web.php — the admin prefix group and the middleware stack are the map of the app.
   • app/Http/Controllers/Admin/ — user, role, permission, log, settings controllers.
   • resources/views/themes/ — theme-specific Blade. Gentelella markup lives here; the layout you @extends is in themes/admin/layouts.
   • config/ — look for the menu, theme, and locale config files. These are the three knobs you'll touch most.
3. First use case: a CRUD screen behind auth + role check Add a migration + model, scaffold a resource controller in Admin/, register routes inside the authenticated admin group, create index/create/edit views that extend the admin layout, and add one entry to the sidebar menu config. That single loop — route → controller → theme view → menu entry → permission seed — is 80% of what you'll do in this codebase.

Implementation Patterns

Routing and access control

• Keep new admin routes inside the existing prefixed group so they inherit auth, locale, and role middleware. Don't create a second parallel group with a hand-rolled stack.
• Authorization is role/permission based, seeded in the database. Prefer @can / Gate::allows() in Blade and $this->authorize() in controllers over ad-hoc if (auth()->user()->isAdmin()) checks — the latter multiplies and rots.
• When you add a feature that needs a new permission, add it in a seeder and assign it to roles there; otherwise existing seeded roles silently lose access after a fresh migrate.

Controllers and validation

• Follow the existing controller shape: thin actions, FormRequest classes for validation, redirect-with-flash for writes. Consistency here matters more than elegance — the boilerplate's conventions are the onboarding docs for the next dev.
• For list screens, mirror the existing pagination/search pattern rather than bolting on a JS grid; Gentelella's tables are plain Bootstrap and behave predictably with server-side pagination.

Views and the theme layout

• Extend the admin layout and fill the sections it defines (content, and usually styles / scripts for per-page assets). Anything pushed into scripts must be guarded with @push/@stack, or page-specific JS leaks between screens.
• Reuse the Gentelella panel/box partials for form and table chrome. Copy-pasting a panel from an existing view is the fastest route to visual consistency — the theme has a lot of markup per widget.
• Keep business logic out of theme views. The theme directory is the most likely thing you'll replace wholesale later, so treat it as presentation-only.

Menu and navigation

• Sidebar entries are config-driven. Add a route name, icon class, label, and any permission gate in the menu config, then clear cached config. Active-state highlighting usually keys off the route name, so name routes consistently (admin.foo.index, admin.foo.edit).
• If a menu item doesn't appear, it's almost always a cached config or a permission the current role lacks — check both before touching the menu builder.

Localization

• All user-facing strings go through __(). The boilerplate ships a locale middleware and a language switcher; new languages require a translation directory plus an entry in the locale config (and often a flag/icon mapping).
• Add keys to every shipped locale, even if the value is the English string. Missing keys fall back silently and you won't notice until a user reports it.

Settings, logging, 2FA, themes

• Application settings are typically DB-backed with a config cache in front. Read through the helper/config facade, not by querying the settings table directly, and bust the cache in the save path.
• There's a DB log channel and an in-admin log viewer. Great for debugging in environments where you can't tail files; risky if left unpruned (see Gotchas).
• Two-factor auth is part of the auth flow — when you customize login, test the 2FA-enabled path explicitly, including the "already enrolled" and "secret reset" branches.
• Theme switching is config/middleware driven. If you add a second theme, it needs the same view contract as the admin theme or the switcher will produce blank pages.

Gotchas and Tips

• Age is the headline risk. Last release was April 2020; expect Laravel 6/7-era conventions, PHP 7.x constraints, Bootstrap 3, and jQuery. Verify composer.json platform requirements before committing, and budget for an upgrade (or a hard pin on PHP) rather than assuming it drops into a modern stack.
• Bootstrap 3 + jQuery will fight modern tooling. Don't mix in Bootstrap 4/5 components or Vue/Alpine widgets inside Gentelella pages without scoping. Keep new interactive bits in isolated containers with their own styles.
• Config and permission caching cause "it didn't change" bugs. After editing menu, theme, locale, or permission configs: php artisan config:clear and php artisan cache:clear. In production, re-run config:cache as part of deploy. If using a permission cache, forget it after seeding.
• Seeders must be idempotent. Re-running db:seed on a live-ish DB will duplicate roles/permissions/settings unless they use firstOrCreate/updateOrCreate. When you add seeds, follow that pattern.
• DB logging grows fast. Schedule pruning of the logging table and cap the log viewer's date range. An unpruned log table is the classic cause of a slow admin dashboard six months in.
• Asset pipeline assumptions. The theme expects compiled vendor assets. If styles look unstyled after setup, it's usually a missed npm run dev, a missing storage:link, or a package that needs vendor:publish for its assets.
• 2FA lockouts are real. Back up the secret at enrollment, document the reset procedure, and make sure server time is NTP-synced — TOTP drift produces "invalid code" reports that look like bugs.
• You own the merge problem. Because this is a starter kit, upstream fixes don't arrive via composer update. If you want to track upstream, keep your changes in clearly separated commits/paths so you can diff and cherry-pick instead of resolving a three-way merge across resources/views.
• Testing: the auth scaffolding means feature tests need actingAs($user) plus the right role/permission attached. Seed minimal roles in test setup rather than relying on the production seeders.
• Extension point to prefer: add new admin features as new controllers/routes/views alongside the boilerplate's, not by editing the shipped user/role/settings controllers. The shipped files are the ones you're most likely to want to replace or diff against upstream later.