About the Book Project
We Dew Lawns is a fictional multi-generational family business who has historically promoted their services through traditional media, including the phone book, mailbox flyers, and local newspaper advertisements. Grandson Todd McDew has recently taken the reins, and although he’s the first to admit being more comfortable wrenching on a lawn mower than typingon a keyboard, he’s determined to bring the company into the 21st century.After several meetings, Todd has concluded he would like to work with you on creating an official company website. However, in order to minimize risk and expense, he insists the project be completed in several phases. If after the completion of this first phase he declares satisfaction, you’ll be hired on to complete the next phase.
Each chapter of this book guides you through a new project phase. At the conclusion of each chapter you’ll be quizzed by Mr. McDew regarding various implementation decisions made throughout the phase, and if you can sufficiently respond to his questions you’ll be invited to work on the next phase. Although we will provide example responses to his questions, we encourage you to think about these and other questions a potential client might ask you on a future project! Below we’ll introduce each phase by way of its corresponding chapter description.
Chapter 1. Creating the We Dew Lawns Website
In this opening phase you’ll be tasked with the creation of a fairly simple Laravel-driven website that tells prospective customers more about the business, and offers a user-friendly contact form which sends inquiries to the company assistant, Patty Organo.
To suit this requirement, you’ll work through the creation of a new Laravel 5 website complete with Less, Elixir, and Bootstrap integration. You’ll also create a home and company bio pages, a site-wide layout, and a Mandrill5-backed contact form.
Chapter 2. Integrating User Accounts
Following a successful launch of the first phase, Mr. McDew would like to begin building a customer mailing list. To entice individuals into handing over their valuable e-mail addresses he would like to offer registered users access to downloadable coupons which they can apply to lawn care services. In this chapter you’ll integrate and customize user registration and authentication features into the site, and create a restricted area of the site accessible only to authenticated users.
Chapter 3. Integrating Stripe and Creating a Product Catalog
With the site launched and the mailing list expanding, Mr. McDew’s ambitions have now turned to online sales. He would like to create a simple online store for selling products such as lawn mowers and gardening tools. In this chapter you’ll integrate Stripe and Laravel Cashier6 to easily and securely accept credit card payments. You’ll also learn how to create a restricted administration console complete with a product catalog manager so Mr. McDew and his team can easily add and update products.
Chapter 4. Selling Electronic and Physical Products
With Stripe and Laravel Cashier integrated, and your product catalog created, it’s time to begin selling products! In this chapter you’ll learn how to sell both electronic (downloadable) and physical
products through your website. We’ll show you how to integrate the secure Stripe “Buy” button and modal, complete transactions using Cashier, and generate one-time URLs for automated product downloads. We’ll also talk a bit about shipping and sales tax complexities, and identify a few popular associated resources.
Chapter 5. Selling Lawn Care Service Subscriptions
In this final project phase, Mr. McDew sets his sights on selling lawn care subscriptions. In this chapter you’ll learn how to integrate Stripe’s recurring billing service into the We Dew Lawns
website, and sell a number of lawn care service tiers to area customers. You’ll also learn how to configure webhooks to autonomously receive and respond to various subscription-related events.
Downloading the We Dew Lawns Project The very same code used to power the WeDewLawns.com website is included with your Leanpub purchase. Be sure to carefully read the README for installation instructions. As we inevitably fix bugs and improve the code, we’ll distribute updates through Leanpub and notify you whenever significant updates are available.
