spyridon

I'm not sure if the official documentation is ideal to learn Laravel, especially considering this is the first modern framework I am going to be using in PHP. Does anyone have any suggestions for the best learning material for using Laravel the proper way as a first framework?

Thanks for the responses. Why, exactly, would Laravel be the recommendation? I see so many recommendations for Laravel but not very many explanations why. I would greatly appreciate to hear some reasons! Thanks!

My next project is going to be upgrading my jobs database/stock management software from windows PC based software, to web-based. Even though I am typically a windows-based programmer, I have decided to use PHP for this project. I am familiar with PHP but I have not used it very much over the years, and there seems to be a ridiculous amount of frameworks. I'm trying to figure out which is best suited for my projects needs. I've (sort of) narrowed it down to Laravel, Yii, or Phalcon (but would appreciate any other suggestions as well). Here are the the requirements for my projects: - Capable of securely logging in employees with different levels of permissions - Encrypting data. - Many database functions, including stock for thousands of products & in depth product statistics (with many potential suppliers for each product), stock updates, sorting, tracking cheapest products, sales, customer list, customer support logs, generating reports, storing product images, incoming order tracking, outputting order lists, part lists, etc. - Using web service API's with merchant sites (such as eBay, Amazon, and our own website) to track sales, update stocks, etc. - Importing excel/csv files of data for quick stock updates - Logging everything action the server performs, and who (or what ebay/amazon account) triggered it - Regular backups - (potentially) a chat/messaging style service for management to speak to each other from neighboring offices. - (hopefully) not a huge amount of resource usage on our VDS server (adequate usage is okay, especially if it is for a database, I just don't want a HUGE resource hog). - As fast development time as possible!! (This is a big one since we are upgrading from an existing system that is showing its age, and development is getting more tedious as it is performing actions it was not originally intended to do). Those are the primary requirements for my project. The reason I narrowed it down to the above 3 suggested frameworks was: Yii: Supposedly it excels in web-based services, and what I need is mostly web based interactions with the database & web service API's (which are mostly XML). Laravel: Just because everyone says its probably the best one out there (although strangely they don't explain exactly why, so I don't know why I would choose this one). Phalcon: For it's speed, although I don't know if this is going to be a factor because we are a small business and most likely won't grow past a few dozen users, who are not using consistently. Of the three I'm thinking Yii is probably the most well suited. Does anyone have any advice for me? Either supporting those thoughts, or against it. Thanks =)