Getting Started With Laravel Lite Blog
Tags: laravel, liteblog, blog, php
Published: 2019-10-18 19:24:09

---
title: Getting Started With Laravel Lite Blog
published: true
date: 2019-10-18 19:02:48 UTC
tags: laravel,lite-blog,blog,php
canonical_url: https://medium.com/@stephenjudeso/getting-started-with-laravel-lite-blog-acf6242df89e
---

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*WOoVgRLUBjsFkKXr)

In my [previous post](http://stephenjude.tech/articles/building-my-personal-blog), I mentioned how I built [Lite Blog](https://github.com/stephenjude/lite-blog). In this post I will be detailing how to get started and some of the interesting features of [Lite Blog](https://github.com/stephenjude/lite-blog).

### Installation

Installing Lite Blog is pretty simple. Its just like installing a Laravel application using composer.

```
composer create-project --prefer-dist stephenjude/lite-blog myblog
```

After the installation, create your database and update  **.env** file with your database credentials. After that run the setup command inside the project directory.

```
cd myblog

php artisan setup:blog
```

This will publish the public assets for the publishing platform ([wink](https://github.com/writingink/wink)) and generate a login credentials for you.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/846/0*mrkMriPf42j3JiCa.png)

Visit myblog.test on your local machine to see your homepage.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*RhuaOWt6F5IphtBt.PNG)

To create post visit myblog.test/editor and login with the generated credentials.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*8oL_J3yec6bmchOc.PNG)

### Site Configs

Here we are going to set the site configuration for our blog. The site configs are inside the config/services.php file.

```
'meta' =\> [
 'site\_name' =\> 'My Perosnal Blog',
 'mantra' =\> 'Web & Mobile Developer', 
],
```

The site\_name is the title of the blog while the mantra is what the site stands for usually under the title of the blog. Update them to fit your taste.

### Social Profile Links

Inside config/services.php add your social media profile links.

```
'social' =\> [
 'linkedin' =\> 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/username/',
 'email' =\> 'mailto:mail@gmail.com',
 'medium' =\> 'https://medium.com/@username',
 'github' =\> 'https://github.com/username',
 'twitter' =\> 'https://twitter.com/username',
 'atom' =\> '#',
 ],
```

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*oZ4H5ylImOtK4KDp.PNG)

### Unsplash Integration

When creating post you might like to make use of free professional photos. Wink comes with Unsplash integration out of the box so head over to [Unspash,](https://unsplash.com/oauth/applications)create a new Unsplash app. Grab the ‘Access Key’ and add it to your .env file as UNSPLASH\_ACCESS\_KEY

### Compiling assets (Optional)

In case you want to recompile the javascript. You have to install the nodejs packages and then run dev, just like you do in your Laravel application.

```
npm install

npm run dev
```

### SEO — Search Engine Optimizations

The Laravel publishing platform I used on this project (wink) made a very nice provision for SEO. It was designed that every post you publish has fields where you can add your post’s SEO data. I have implemented this on the resources/views/post.blade.php.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/891/0*62e4o0sJkY4lW_3T.png)

For the SEO image, I made use of post featured image. So automatically your featured image will appear as you share the post on twitter, facebook or any other social network sites.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/882/0*GzzBI0x0s-h77I9M.png)

I also used post tags as SEO keywords so adding tags to your post is a plus.

### Conclusion

[Lite Blog](https://github.com/stephenjude/lite-blog) is a Laravel application and its highly flexible for modification. You can find the project on [github](https://github.com/stephenjude/lite-blog) and its open for contributions.