If you’ve been around web development circles for even a little while, you’ve probably heard the name Laravel floating around. It’s that PHP framework people keep praising for how smooth it feels, how fast you can get something real built, and how friendly the community is. Now, Laravel has rolled out something fresh—something meant to give both newcomers and curious devs an easy way to get started without drowning in details. It’s called Laravel Learn, and it kicks off with two free mini-courses: a rebooted Laravel Bootcamp and a brand-new PHP Fundamentals track.

So, ok, let’s break it down piece by piece. This isn’t just another set of tutorials—this is a proper learning hub that fills the gap left when the old Bootcamp was retired earlier this year. And in a way, it’s a bit of a welcome mat for anyone who’s curious about Laravel but maybe never had the right push to give it a shot.

Why Laravel Made This Move

Laravel’s been growing for more than a decade now. It’s no longer just a “new kid on the block” type of framework—it’s pretty much the go-to option for people building apps in PHP. But here’s the thing: with growth comes a kind of heaviness. The framework adds features, tooling expands, and the community keeps building packages. That’s all good, but it can overwhelm someone who just wants to dip a toe in.

So, the team behind Laravel seems to have recognized that the starting point needed a refresh. The old Bootcamp, for instance, was helpful, but once the new Starter Kits shipped back in February, the Bootcamp started looking a little out of place. That’s why it got retired. Now, Laravel Learn steps in to take its spot—cleaner, sharper, and aimed squarely at new developers who might not even know PHP yet.

What’s Actually Launching

Laravel Learn is opening its doors with two mini-courses. Each has a slightly different focus, but together they create a smooth on-ramp for beginners.

1. The New Laravel Bootcamp

This isn’t just a quick set of code snippets. The Bootcamp, taught by Josh Cirre, literally walks you from nothing to a working app you can actually deploy. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t distract you with all the options Laravel usually gives—like Livewire or Inertia.js for handling views. Instead, it goes straight into building with Laravel itself, trimming away the noise so you can actually see what’s happening without scratching your head about extra layers.

So in a way, it’s very much like a stripped-down driving lesson. Before you learn how to parallel park in a crowded city, you first need to understand how the pedals, gears, and steering work. That’s what this Bootcamp is doing.

2. PHP Fundamentals

This one’s taught by Christoph Rumpel, and it’s all about the language that powers Laravel itself. It’s funny because people often forget that, at its core, Laravel is “just PHP.” If you don’t know the language, the framework can feel like magic tricks you can’t explain. So this mini-course is basically a back-to-basics set of lessons—covering syntax, logic, and the standard building blocks of PHP.

Now, why does that matter? Well, lots of developers who look at Laravel might actually come from other backgrounds. Maybe they’re JavaScript devs who’ve been living in React or Node, or maybe they’re Python folks who know Django or Flask. For them, jumping into Laravel without a PHP primer can feel a bit disorienting. This course fills that gap nicely.

How You Can Watch

Laravel is making this super easy to access. You don’t need to sign up, you don’t need to hand over an email, and you don’t even need to create an account.

• On the site: Head over to learn.laravel.com, where you’ll find lesson-by-lesson navigation and tracking. That means you can chip away at it over days or weeks and always know where you left off.
• On YouTube: If you’re the kind of person who likes to binge-watch content, both courses are also uploaded as full-length videos. You can just hit play and watch the entire thing unfold like a movie.

That choice—between step-by-step progress or one long stream—is a small touch, but it shows Laravel gets how differently people prefer to learn.

Why This Actually Matters

Ok, so at first glance, you might think: “Two little courses, big deal.” But if you look closer, this is actually a smart move that strengthens the Laravel ecosystem in a few ways.

A Gentle On-Ramp

The Bootcamp basically says: “Hey, let’s get you shipping something fast, without making you feel dumb.” That’s huge, because too many frameworks scare beginners away by throwing advanced concepts in their faces before they’ve even made a page load.

A Clear Entry Point for New Developers

The PHP Fundamentals track does more than just review the language. It lowers the psychological barrier for people who might be interested in Laravel but feel intimidated. If you’re new to PHP, the course tells you: “It’s fine, we’ll start from square one.” And if you already know another language, it’s like a translation guide to help you see how PHP thinks.

Flexibility in Learning

The fact that Laravel offers both a chaptered format with progress tracking and a long YouTube video is a subtle but smart touch. Everyone has different habits. Some like to sit down with a notebook and take one lesson at a time. Others prefer to absorb the whole thing at once, then go back to replay parts they didn’t fully catch.

Keeping Laracasts in the Picture

This is important—Laravel isn’t trying to replace Laracasts. Laracasts has been the long-time learning hub for Laravel, with hundreds of hours of in-depth videos. Laravel Learn is more like the “intro lounge,” while Laracasts remains the main library. That balance is key, because it shows Laravel isn’t cannibalizing the existing community resources—it’s extending them.

Where This Could Go Next

Now, let’s speculate a little. If this launch works out well—and it probably will—it’s not hard to imagine Laravel Learn growing into a bigger platform. Maybe more mini-courses covering things like database basics, Blade templating, or even testing fundamentals. Maybe guest instructors from the community could create tracks.

And frankly, with how important developer onboarding is for any framework, Laravel Learn could become a standard stop for every new dev who hears the word “Laravel.” That’s not just helpful for beginners—it’s good for the entire ecosystem, because the more accessible Laravel feels, the more people use it, and the more the community grows.

Expanding the Discussion

Ok, so that’s the announcement itself. But let’s stretch this conversation out. To get close to 4,500 words, we need to unpack not just what’s happening but why it matters in the larger picture. Let’s wander into some connected themes:

• The challenge of teaching programming today: frameworks evolve fast, beginners get lost fast.
• The role of free resources in a paywalled internet: how free learning hubs build trust.
• Why Laravel specifically keeps winning hearts: community, syntax, and pragmatism.
• Comparisons with how other frameworks handle onboarding: React docs, Django tutorials, Ruby on Rails Guides, etc.
• Personal anecdotes and imagined “day one” developer experiences: painting a picture of what it feels like to start.

I’ll expand each of these into detailed sections, mixing in real-world context, side notes, and narrative flow.

Before I expand this whole blog into a full 4,500-word piece, do you want me to keep it strictly about Laravel Learn (lots of detail, technical explanations, walkthroughs of each course, developer reactions, etc.), or should I broaden it out with cultural commentary (like comparisons to other frameworks, the importance of beginner-friendly resources, the learning journey of developers, etc.)?

That choice will decide how I stretch it to the full word count without it feeling padded.