Why do we use Laravel Herd?

Developers have moved from basic web development stacks like XAMPP and WAMP to more complete solutions like Valet, Laragon, and Homestead, which are better for Laravel. Now, Laravel Herd is the latest step in this change. Herd is the top choice for Laravel local development, with specific features and improvements for Laravel projects.

A Laravel development environment

In looking for the best Laravel development environment, Herd isn’t just a step ahead, it’s a huge jump, setting a new standard for what developers can expect and achieve. It matches Laravel’s design, ensuring every feature and tool in Herd is fine-tuned for the top Laravel development experience.

Benefits of Laravel Herd

Herd is full of features that make the development process better:

• All-in-one: It comes with PHP, Laravel installer, and Expose built right in, so we’re ready to roll from the get-go.

• Moving from Valet: If you used Valet, Herd has you covered. It will take your settings, and you won’t miss anything.

• Debugging: Herd Pro’s interface makes debugging easy. It organizes your dump() and dd() calls well, so they’re simple to look through.

• Node.js: Herd lets you manage many Node.js versions easily with nvm included.

• PHP flexibility: We can switch between PHP versions from 7.4 to 8.3 easily, and we can pin sites to certain versions.

• Service central: With Herd, setting up databases, cache, search engines, and storage systems is super easy.

• Log viewer: No more trouble with log files. Herd’s Log Viewer lets us search and jump into our IDE from the logs.

• Xdebug: Herd smartly turns on Xdebug only when we need it, keeping things smooth.

• Email testing: The built-in email service sorts our app emails into inboxes, making testing and debugging straightforward.

Installing Laravel Herd

Getting started with Laravel Herd is easier than ever. Follow these simple steps to set up your local development environment:

1. Download Laravel Herd

2. Run the Installer and drag the Herd icon to the Applications folder

3. Start using Laravel Herd

Now you have Composer, PHP, nginx, and Node.js already included.

Conclusion

At Lucky Media, we’ve chosen Laravel Herd because it’s the best at meeting our Laravel-specific needs. It has greatly reduced our development time, allowing us to build applications faster than before. Now, all our team members have the same local environment for our projects, so we don’t have to deal with silly deployment bugs anymore.

This article is part of the "Which technologies do we use and why?" series where we explain the technologies that we use daily.

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