The release of Laravel 11 and Laravel Reverb will happen on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Along with major updates to Laravel, we'll get a new welcome page when creating a new Laravel application with laravel new or composer.
I thought it would be fun to see how the welcome page has evolved over previous versions of Laravel. Whether you are new to the framework or have been around a while, there's something special about creating a new Laravel project and seeing that welcome screen!
Laravel 11
Laravel 11 will feature a light and dark theme, which looks gorgeous and inviting. It has a vibrant background, clean icons, and a welcoming feel that inspires creativity:
Laravel 10
It's hard to believe that Laravel 10 was released a year ago on February 14, 2023. Over the last year, we've received countless amazing new features and quality-of-life updates. Here's what the welcome page looks like with a fresh Laravel 10 installation:
Notably, the Laravel logo is centered and is only the logo mark. Laravel 9 and 8 had a left-aligned logo + Laravel text mark:
Laravel 8
The welcome page featured in Laravel 8 was the first time we saw a significant change since Laravel 5.x. Laravel 8 was released on September 8, 2020, during the period of time Laravel released a major version every six months:
Laravel's branding was technically updated around the Laravel 6 release. However, Laravel 8 was the first time the new logo was introduced on the welcome page. It featured four main areas/links: documentation, Laravel News, Laracasts, and prominent ecosystem links.
Laravel 5.5
Between Laravel 6 and 7, we didn't see any significant changes to the welcome page, but at some point in the 5.x releases, the welcome page included links to documentation, Laracasts, Laravel News, Forge, and GitHub:
Laravel 5.0
Laravel 5.0's landing page had the words "Laravel 5" and rendered a random inspiring quote using the Inspiring facade:
<div class="content"> <div class="title">Laravel 5</div> <div class="quote">{{ Inspiring::quote() }}</div></div>
Bonus: Laravel 4.2
Laravel 4.2 had a minimal welcome page featuring a nostalgic logo (base64 image) and folder structure, which included this hello.php file, with the text, "You have arrived."
