Laravel: Code Bright

Hi again!

TL DR; This title is the successor to Laravel Code Happy, which sold almost 3000 copies last year, and was considered one of the top learning resources for the Laravel framework. At $29 and cheaper than a good pizza, you will get the book in its current partial form, along with all future chapters, updates, and fixes for free. As of the day I last updated this description, Code Bright had 260 pages and was just getting started. To give you some perspective on how detailed it is, Code Happy was 127 pages in its complete state. Want to know more? Carry on reading.

Welcome back to Laravel. Last year I wrote a book about the Laravel PHP framework. It started as a collection of tutorials on my blog, and eventually became a full book. I definitely didn’t expect it to be as popular as it was. Code Happy has sold almost 3000 copies, and is considered to be one of the most valuable resources for learning the Laravel framework.

Code Bright is the spiritual successor to Code Happy. The framework has grown a lot in the past year, and has changed enough to merit a new title. With Code Bright I hope to improve on Code Happy with every way, my goal is, to once again, build the most comprehensive learning experience for the framework. Oh, and to still be funny. That’s very important to me.

Laravel Code Bright will contain a complete learning experience for all of the framework’s features. The style of writing will make it approachable for beginners, and a wonderful reference resource for experienced developers alike.

You see, people have told me that they enjoyed reading Code Happy, not only for its educational content, but for its humour, and for my down to earth writing style. This is very important to me. I like to write my books as if we were having a conversation in a bar.

When I wrote Code Happy last year, I was simply a framework enthusiast. One of the first to share information about the framework. However, since then I have become a committed member of the core development team. Working directly with the framework author to make Laravel a wonderful experience for the developers of the world.

One other important feature of both books, is that they are published while in progress. This means that the book is available in an incomplete state, but will grow over time into a complete title. All future updates will be provided for free.

What this means is that I don’t have to worry about deadlines, or a fixed point of completion. It leads to less stress and better writing. If I think of a better way to explain something, I can go back and change it. In a sense, the book will never be completed. I can constantly add more information to it, until it becomes the perfect resource.

Given that this time I am using the majority of my spare time to write the title (yes, I have a full time job too!), I have raised the price a little to justify my invested time. I was told by many of my past readers that they found the previous title very cheap for the resource that it grew into, so if you are worried about the new price, then let me remind you what you will get for your 29 bucks.

• The successor to Code Happy, seen by many as the #1 learning resource for the Laravel PHP framework.
• An unending source of information, chapters will be constantly added as needed until the book becomes a giant vault of framework knowledge.
• Comedy, and a little cheesy, but very friendly writing.
• Free updates for life! This includes all of the updates made to keep the book compatible with version 4.x of the framework. You will receive an email whenever an addition has been made to the title.
• Early information from a Laravel core developer.
• Support my future writing. I’d love to write more, and have some more books in mind for the future! Including some topics other than Laravel.
• My full attention. Find something you don’t like about the book? Let me know, and I’ll see if I can improve it!
• A photo of a red panda on the cover. Seriously, they are cute right?

All that for cheaper than a (good) pizza? Sounds like a deal to me!

Still not convinced? Let me share with you what Laravel’s author, and some of my readers have to say about my writing.

"Dayle Rees has been a central figure in the Laravel community for a long time. He's well known not only for his knowledge of the framework, but also his friendly attitude and keen ability to explain Laravel concepts to beginners. There are few people as qualified as Dayle to write a thorough introduction to the Laravel framework. With Code Bright, he continues the same accessible style that made Code Happy such a great introduction to Laravel 3." - Taylor Otwell, Framework Author.

"Reading Dayle's 'Code Happy' made it super easy to get up and going with Laravel. Even with the more advanced topics, his was of explaining things without complicating things is a talent in itself." - Chris Duell

"The holy grail for anyone wanting to learn Laravel." - Rujaun

"Code Happy allowed me to get up to speed super quick! Very entertaining read that keeps you engaged and wanting more! Thanks!" - Mike Rogne

"I bought Code Happy at the behest of Jeffrey Way's Laravel's Essentials course, and the wealth of knowledge available in this book is phenomenal. It is nice to purchase books from professionals who know what they're writing about, but as a Laravel Core Development team member Dayle gives you insight few others can. Dayle goes into every detail of the Laravel Framework, from Laravels amazing schema system to eloquent and beyond this book offers a wealth of knowledge worth having. I create Laravel tutorials on Youtube and Code Happy has been an invaluable tool. I couldn't have done any of it without this book." - Kristopher Rapier

“I used other frameworks in the past and then Laravel started to showed up in my twitter timeline. I was a happy coder with my framework of choice but I was seeing a lot of people moving out to Laravel. The website was nice, the documentation was clear and helpful but then I bought Code Happy just to have a big view on how Laravel worked. I end up loving the Laravel syntax, expressiveness and having a real idea how a Laravel app worked in no-time. I finally switched.” - Isern Palaus

”Code Happy was my launching pad into the PHP world. I had tried for quite some time to wrap my head around using a framework, it just never did quite stick. Once I got hold of code happy it all started to make sense. I completed my first Laravel application in a couple of weeks time and haven't looked back..” - Zane Conkle

”At the beginning of 2013, I decided to have a look at PHP Frameworks with the aim of finding something I could use both for my day job and personal projects. I asked Jeffrey Way for advice and he pointed me in Laravel's direction. To be honest, I had never heard of Laravel but a quick search on Google for tutorials revealed very good reviews for Dayle Rees' Laravel tutorials. I bought Dayle's Code Happy book and up to date, remains the best thing I've bought in the near past. The casual way with which he explains the concepts was very useful to my learning. The book covers everything you need to know to create a full Laravel web application. In fact, I am in the process of creating an in-house CMS (for my place of work) based on Laravel, two months after writing my first Laravel 'Hello World'. But the first tab on my browser window is always codehappy.daylerees.com, which remains my main point of reference. Thanks for the great job!” - James K. Ilaki

”Dayle's conversational style writing makes it feel like you have a more experienced developer buddy peering over your shoulder, helping you along. If I just wanted to know how something works, I would read the documentation, but the book also explains why it's useful, and when and where to use it!” - Rob Meijer