Full Stack Web Development with PHP & Laravel

The picture that stops you guessing later.

• Request and response
  DNS, server, browser. What actually happens between typing an address and seeing a page.
• HTML that describes meaning hands on
  Semantic structure, forms and accessibility that costs nothing to get right.
• CSS layout that holds hands on
  Flexbox and grid, built rather than nudged.
• Mobile first, because your users are hands on
  A mid-range Android on a patchy connection is the real target here.

Modern PHP, not what the internet remembers from 2010.

• Types, arrays and strings hands on
  Including the comparison rules that bite beginners.
• Functions, classes and namespaces hands on
  Object orientation as a way to organise, not as ceremony.
• Composer and the ecosystem hands on
  Dependencies, autoloading, and judging whether a package is safe to add.
• Errors and exceptions hands on
  Failing loudly in development and gracefully in production.

MySQL, which is what the local hosting market runs.

• Designing tables that will not hurt later hands on
  Keys, relationships, indexes, and the cost of the wrong shape.
• SQL you will actually write hands on
  SELECT, JOIN, GROUP BY, and reading a query someone else left behind.
• Prepared statements hands on
  SQL injection demonstrated working, then closed.
• Migrations hands on
  Schema as versioned code rather than a change someone made in phpMyAdmin.

The framework almost every local PHP job expects.

• Routing, controllers and Blade hands on
  The request lifecycle, followed end to end.
• Eloquent and relationships hands on
  Models, eager loading, and the N+1 query that quietly ruins performance.
• Validation and form requests hands on
  Validating on the server, always — client-side is a convenience, never a control.
• Authentication and authorisation hands on
  Who someone is versus what they may do, and the bug where changing an id in the URL reads someone else's record.
• Queues, jobs and scheduled tasks hands on
  Work that should not happen while a user waits.
• Testing a Laravel application hands on
  Feature tests that exercise a real route against a real database.

The parts a client never asks for and always needs.

• The common web vulnerabilities, demonstrated hands on
  Injection, XSS, CSRF and broken access control — shown working, then fixed.
• File uploads done safely hands on
  The single most commonly mishandled feature in local PHP applications.
• Caching and query optimisation hands on
  Measuring first, then fixing the thing that is actually slow.
• Handling money correctly
  Never floats, always minor units — and rounding rules that reconcile to the rupee.

Live, and still live next month.

• Git in a team hands on
  Branches, pull requests, review, and resolving a conflict calmly.
• Deploying to a VPS or shared host hands on
  Both routes, because clients here use both.
• Environment config, secrets and backups hands on
  Including restoring a backup, not merely taking one.
• Logging, errors and rollback hands on
  Knowing it broke before the client rings, and being able to undo it.

Pakistan's National Vocational & Technical Training Commission publishes a course-contents document for the trades it funds. This programme is mapped to CIT (Web, Software & Mobile Web Development) — 12 weeks, 5 hours a day, 300 contact hours.

Published by NAVTTC and reproduced here so you can check our syllabus against it. We teach it to those hours: 300 contact hours over 12 weeks, the same as the standard. Read the NAVTTC document.

Before you start

• Free: Web Development Basics
  Assumed from week one.
• Comfortable typing and using a computer
  This is an intensive programme; slow typing genuinely holds students back.

Where it leads

• WordPress Mastery With Elementor
  A large share of local client work is WordPress, and PHP is what it is built on.
• Cyber Security
  The natural specialisation for developers who enjoyed the security module.

Roles this prepares you for

• Junior PHP / Laravel Developer
  The most common web development vacancy in Pakistan.
• Web Developer (agency)
  Client sites and business systems.
• Freelance Web Developer
  Requires the business skills taught in the Freelancing course as well.

Interested in this programme?

Try the subject free first — there is no reason to pay before you know you like it.