Hey, friend!

Do you remember how, a few newsletters ago, I teased a new side project with a little cropped screenshot?

Things have changed direction a bit since then.

Back then–was it March?–it was a book. "Laravel Quickstart," I think, was its tentative name.

Since that book isn't going to happen, I'll now "leak" the original plan: I was going to write and self-publish my second book, a 50-70 page intro to Laravel; a true "up and running" guide, not like my 500-page O'Reilly book turned out to be. 😬

However, the more I thought about the book, the more I realized... it would be better as a free resource, targeting anyone new to Laravel.

Thus was born... Onramp.

What is Onramp?

The easiest way to tell you is to give you a link to my Laracon US talk from this year (Matt Stauffer: The Magic of Laravel), where I introduced Onramp and also gave a lot of context for why I think it's worthwhile. Or, you can listen to the Five Minute Geek Show episode introducing it.

But, here's the simple version:

Onramp is a web site I'm building, sponsored by Tighten, open source and hopefully contributed to by a broad swath of the community.

The goal of Onramp is to make it as easy as possible for developers to gain the proficiency to get a job as a Laravel programmer.

I think the Laravel community is magical. I want more people to join it. I hope Onramp will be the tool for that to happen.

Streaming it

I'm live streaming as much of the development of Onramp as I can. You can follow me on Twitch or YouTube or watch the YouTube videos later; I've got links to all of these options at mattstauffer.com/stream. The current goal is to stream 11am Eastern every Friday, and hopefully get in at least one other stream every week, all announced on Twitter at least an hour beforehand.

Helping out

Do you want to help out? There's a Telegram chat room I've created for folks interested in contributing: t.me/onramp

You can also check out the GitHub issues.

Finally, join me on the streams! I ask for help from people who are hanging out with me there, but also we'll hopefully soon be at a place where I can start asking others to PR work into the codebase.

Is Onramp everything?

I'm also, as I mentioned in my Laracon talk, planning Laravel Podcast Season Four, in which we'll cover introductory topics that can pair together with the things people are learning through Onramp.

There's a ton more going on. More projects, more ideas, a hopefully-really-cool plan for some Laracon scholarships, and much more.

Also, I guess, the content! Since my last newsletter:

Podcasts

Blog posts:

I've also been interviewed on a podcast or two. I'll link them out once they go live.

OK, phew. That's all for now. Thanks for sticking around!

Your friend,
Matt Stauffer