Matt Stauffer discusses his recent appointment to the PHP Foundation board and provides insights into the foundation's purpose, structure, and impact on the Laravel community. He emphasizes the importance of community contribution and support for the PHP Foundation's initiatives, highlighting the potential for positive change and collaboration within the PHP ecosystem.

Takeaways

• PHP Foundation's Purpose
• Community Contribution

Chapters

• 00:00 Joining the PHP Foundation Board
• 06:34 Board Responsibilities and Meetings
• 12:00 Community Contribution and Support
• 18:11 PHP Foundation's Role and Future

The conversation covers experiences at Laracon India and preparations for Laracon EU, as well as announcements made at Laracon India regarding Native PHP version 3, technical limitations, open-source development, and showcasing Native PHP's apps and capabilities. The conversation delves into the power of Laravel plugins and their impact on empowering developers. It explores early plugin adoption and sponsorship, as well as the integration of a local ML model on a device. Additionally, it highlights the significance of the Cloud Code Plugin and its potential for developers.

Takeaways

• Laracon India and Laracon EU events
• Native PHP version 3 and its features
• Challenges and opportunities in building mobile apps with Native PHP Local ML model on device
• Power of Laravel plugins

In this live episode of the Laravel Creator Series, I’m joined by Dan Newns, co-founder of Jump24, a Laravel development studio with over a decade of real-world experience building Laravel applications across multiple industries.

We talk candidly about:

- How Jump24 uses Laravel in client and internal projects
- Creating weekly “This Week in Laravel” style videos
- AI tools in PHP and Laravel workflows
- Planning vs one-shot prompting with AI
- Skills, agents, and internal AI tooling
- PHP’s evolution and where Laravel is headed next
- The future of junior and senior developer roles
- Middleware, architecture, and long-term maintainability
- Conferences like Laracon EU and Laravel Live UK

Show Links

- Daniel Newns LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-newns/
- Daniel Newns X https://x.com/DanielNewns
- Jump 24 - https://jump24.co.uk/

This was a relaxed, unscripted live conversation covering what it’s really like to build with Laravel in 2026 and how AI is starting to reshape the ecosystem without replacing experienced developers.

If you’re working with Laravel, curious about AI-assisted development, or thinking about the future of PHP, this one’s for you.

PIE is a new installer for PHP extensions intended to eventually replace PECL. It is distributed as a PHAR, just like Composer, and works similarly to Composer. However, it installs PHP extensions (PHP Modules or Zend Extensions) to your PHP installation rather than pulling PHP packages into your project or library.

🔗 Show Links

• https://laravel-news.com/php-pie-with-james-titcumb
• https://github.com/php/pie
• https://github.com/asgrim

In this episode, Eric Barnes sits down with James Brooks, team lead for Laravel’s core services team, to dive into the new Laravel Forge launch. James walks through the biggest updates to Forge, from organization support and zero-downtime deployments to the new command palette that makes managing servers and deployments easier than ever.

We also explore how Forge compares with Envoyer and Laravel Cloud, the challenges of building on top of legacy infrastructure, and how community feedback continues to shape the future of Laravel’s server management tools. Whether you’re a hobbyist or running production workloads at scale, this conversation will help you understand how Forge empowers developers with flexibility and control.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• James Brooks leads Laravel’s core services, including Forge and Envoyer.
• The new Forge introduces organization support and zero-downtime deployments.
• The command palette is a major UX improvement for developers.
• Forge continues to provide maximum flexibility for custom server setups.
• Envoyer focuses on zero-downtime deployments across multiple servers.
• Laravel Cloud offers a fully managed, simplified deployment experience.
• User feedback is central to feature development and roadmap decisions.

🔗 Resources

• Laravel Forge
• Laravel Cloud

Laravel Boost is your new AI coding starter kit, designed to make working with AI agents better. It does this by feeding them Laravel-specific data to help them write higher-quality code. Ashley Hindle described it as, "Boost helps guide the AI to do better".

Some of the features of Boost include:

• Provides a Laravel-specific MCP Server
• Version-specific documentation
• Laravel maintained AI guidelines

Show Links

https://laravel-news.com/laravel-boost
https://x.com/ashleyhindle
https://x.com/ericlbarnes

Eric and Brent discuss the evolution of PHP, the importance of testing, and the introduction of Tempest, a new PHP framework. They delve into the challenges of code highlighting and the innovations that have emerged in the PHP community, including the exciting developments surrounding Franken-PHP. The discussion also touches on the future of PHP and upcoming events in the community.

Show Links: 

* https://stitcher.io
* https://www.youtube.com/@phpannotated
* https://laravel-news.com/tempest-highlight

Chapters

00:00 Celebrating 30 Years of PHP: The PHPverse
20:41 The Evolution of PHP: Features and Community Feedback
25:26 Exciting New Features: The Pipe Operator in PHP 8.5
34:31 The Importance of Testing in PHP Development
38:08 Introducing Tempest: A New PHP Framework
45:58 The Evolution of Code Highlighting in PHP
52:54 Exciting Developments in the PHP Community

Takeaways

* PHP is celebrating its 30th anniversary with the PHPverse event.
* The PHP community has evolved significantly over the years.
* JetBrains is hosting a live-streamed event to celebrate PHP's milestone.
* The pipe operator is a new feature in PHP 8.5 that enhances code readability.
* Community feedback is crucial in the evolution of PHP features.
* The PHP core team consists of a diverse group of contributors.
* The acceptance of new features often faces initial resistance from the community.
* The importance of community in shaping the future of PHP is emphasized.
* Type properties introduced in PHP 7.4 have greatly improved code quality.
* The evolution of PHP has made it a more robust and user-friendly language. Testing is crucial for PHP development.
* Many developers still do not write tests.
* Innovation in PHP frameworks like Laravel is essential.
* Tempest is a new PHP framework that aims to simplify development.
* Code highlighting has evolved significantly in PHP.
* Brent created a highlighter package to address modern PHP needs.
* The highlighter package is extensible and user-friendly.
* Franken-PHP is a new runtime for PHP that simplifies deployment.
* The PHP community is thriving with new projects and events.
* Consistency in content creation is key to success.

WhispPHP is a Pure PHP SSH server created by Ashley Hindle. It is the simplest way to build PHP SSH apps and allows you to run your Laravel Prompts apps through SSH with ridiculous simplicity.

Show Links: 

- Whisp Docs - https://whispphp.com
- Whisp Demos - https://whispphp.com/docs/1.0.0/whisp-demos
- Ashley’s site - https://ashleyhindle.com
- FancyOG - https://fancyog.com
- Croft - https://github.com/ashleyhindle/croft
- Cursor AI IDE - https://www.cursor.com/
- Sam Carre’s ssh-php - https://github.com/Sammyjo20/ssh-php
- Terminal.shop - https://www.terminal.shop/
- Joe Tannenbaum’s CLI experiments - https://laracasts.com/series/cli-experiments
- Joe Tannenbaum’s hacking prompts for fun and profit - https://blog.joe.codes/hacking-laravel-prompts-for-fun-and-profit

In this episode, Eric L. Barnes sits down with Zuzana to explore the power of community in tech and her journey building Larabelles, an initiative supporting women and everyone who doesn't identify as a man in Laravel development. Zuzana shares her path into tech, the challenges of promoting diversity, and why visible role models matter. They dive into the importance of sponsorships, the flexibility tech careers offer (especially for parents), and how creativity and mindfulness intersect with coding. 

# Show Links

* https://larabelles.com/
* https://www.zuzana-k.com/
* https://cheeseandweather.com/

We sat down with Dave Hicking to talk about LaraJobs' new section of articles and videos to help you advance your career and improve your hiring processes. They are breaking it down into two sections:

For Developers: How to Get Hired

This section offers insights and practical advice to assist developers in navigating the job market effectively. Some of the highlights include:

• Finding Your First Developer Job: Essential strategies for landing your first role in software development.
• Level Up: From Junior to Senior Developer: Guidance on advancing your career in software development.
• How to Prepare for a Job Interview: Effective strategies to confidently prepare for and succeed in your next job interview.

For Hiring Managers: How to Hire

This segment focuses on enhancing the hiring process to attract and retain top talent. Key articles include:

• Creating a Good Hiring Process: A comprehensive guide to building an effective hiring process that attracts and identifies the right candidates.
• How to Write a Good Job Post: Crafting clear, compelling job posts to attract the right developer candidates.
• Building a Team That Works Well Together: Key steps to building a high-performing team.

Show Links

• LaraJobs Hiring and Career Articles
• LaraJobs YouTube
• LaraJobs Affiliate Program