- What is a Shopper starter kit, and how is it different from a theme?
- A starter kit is a scaffold, not a theme: it is installed once into your Laravel application and copies real storefront code into your project, which you then own and can edit, reorganize, or delete. A theme, by contrast, stays upstream and receives pushed updates. Because the files land in your application rather than in vendor, you get full control but also full responsibility for future changes.
- How do I install a starter kit, and do I need shopper/starter-kits as a Composer dependency?
- You install a kit through the Shopper CLI with php artisan shopper:kit:install vendor/package, which reads the kit's shopper-kit.yaml manifest and copies files, pulls dependencies, and runs post-install commands. shopper/starter-kits itself is only a registry of available kits and does not need to be required in your application. The package you actually install is the individual kit repository, such as shopperlabs/livewire-starter-kit.
- Which starter kits are listed in the registry?
- The registry lists three official kits: a Livewire and Alpine storefront with checkout, accounts, and product pages; an Inertia and Vue 3 storefront; and an Inertia and React 19 storefront. The Vue and React kits ship with Tailwind v4, Wayfinder routes, multi-currency zones, cart, checkout, and Stripe payment. Community kits can be added through a pull request, so the list grows over time.
- Do I need Shopper installed before using a starter kit?
- Yes. Starter kits are the last mile of a Shopper adoption, not a replacement for it, so the Shopper package and its migrations must already be in place. The installer runs inside your application and assumes Shopper's routes, models, and CLI are available. If Shopper is not your e-commerce platform yet, treat this as a platform evaluation rather than a scaffolding decision.
- Which Laravel, PHP, and Livewire versions do the starter kits support?
- The registry does not pin versions itself; each kit declares its own Composer constraints, and Shopper core sets the effective Laravel floor. The Livewire kit assumes Livewire v3, while the Vue and React kits are Inertia-based and target Vue 3 and React 19 respectively. Check the kit's composer.json before planning an upgrade, because scaffolds can break silently when you bump Laravel or Livewire later.
- What is shopper-kit.yaml and what does the manifest control?
- shopper-kit.yaml is the contract the installer reads: it declares which files to copy into your application, which dependencies to install, and which commands to run after installation. Because those commands execute with your application's privileges during setup, the manifest is worth reviewing before the first install. A simple, stable manifest schema also makes it practical to lint file layout and manifest correctness in CI across multiple Shopper projects.
- Is the kit installer safe to run, and how should I handle post-install commands?
- Treat installation as a privileged build step rather than a developer convenience, and run it in a controlled environment or CI job where the manifest has been reviewed. Anything the kit declares, including post-install commands, executes with your application's privileges. Review the manifest and the kit's diff before the first install, and keep the install command out of production tooling.
- How do I keep an installed starter kit updated when Shopper or Livewire ships changes?
- You own the installed code, so there is no upstream patch channel: Shopper or Livewire security fixes and breaking changes become your remediation work. Pin dependency versions in the scaffold output and keep the project diffable against the kit's releases so you can spot and re-apply upstream changes. Budget a recurring upgrade line item and assign an internal owner for the kit's code from day one.
- How do I test a storefront built from a starter kit?
- Once installed, the storefront is ordinary Laravel code, so you test it with Pest or PHPUnit like any other application feature. Add a CI smoke test over the core flows the kit provides: product pages, cart, checkout, and account screens. Pinning versions and running that suite on every framework bump catches the silent breakage scaffolds are prone to.
- Can I submit my own starter kit, and what if none of the listed kits fit?
- Yes. The registry is community-driven, and the contributing guide explains how to submit a kit through a pull request. If none of the official kits match your stack, you can build a storefront directly on Shopper or scaffold your own manifest-declared kit. The registry is a convenience and a convention, not a hard requirement for using Shopper.