Hey, I am Matt Stauffer, CEO at Tighten, and one of the absolute first mega fans of Laravel Forge. I've been using it since before it was officially released. It is by far the most impactful SaaS product I have ever used, bar none. And I've also introduced Forge to hundreds of our clients and tens of thousands of Laravel developers, and I'm extremely excited to show you Forge, whether it's your first time or you're coming back to take a look at

whether it's your first time or you're coming back to take a look at what the Laravel team is calling Forge 2.0. So what is Forge? Well, before Forge, a lot of PHP developers were in one of two buckets when it came to hosting and deploying their apps. The first bucket was largely comprised of developers hosting their apps on cheap shared hosts and then uploading and editing their files

of developers hosting their apps on cheap shared hosts and then uploading and editing their files or our files through FTP or SFTP if you were fancy. The second bucket was folks a little bit more refined. They had VPSs or virtual private servers, and these were either provided by a highly controlling server provider, which usually means you had very little control yourself, or you had to manage it yourself on bare metal things like Amazon, ECS

or you had to manage it yourself on bare metal things like Amazon, ECS or od, which means you need to know how to spin up and configure a full Linux VPS to serve your sites and keep it up to date. And hopefully if they were this far, they were also at least using GI to deploy their apps, but they probably still had to SSH in every single time they wanted to run a deploy. It was the difficult old days. And then came Forge.

to SSH in every single time they wanted to run a deploy. It was the difficult old days. And then came Forge. Forge spun up new servers, perfectly configured to run your Laravel app. And at that time, also WordPress and Minecraft servers as well. It made it super easy to add new sites to those servers, manage your dependencies and auto trigger deployments with customized deploy scripts every time you

and auto trigger deployments with customized deploy scripts every time you push new code to your GI host. It was revolutionary. And in the years since, the Forge team has added an incredible host of features leading up to a launch in 2025 of Forged 2.0, another leap forward in functionality and usability of this already powerful application. And don't worry, we will cover everything. So how does Forge compare to Cloud and Vapor?

And don't worry, we will cover everything. So how does Forge compare to Cloud and Vapor? So if you're looking at the Laravel hosting ecosystem, you might have noticed that Forge is not alone there. And you might be wondering, well, what's the difference between Forge and Laravel? Two other hosting tools, cloud and Vapor and Vapor's Easy. It hosts your Laravel apps on AWS's serverless in infrastructure. Lambdas, it takes more work to launch your apps on Vapor and

serverless in infrastructure. Lambdas, it takes more work to launch your apps on Vapor and or also a bit more limited in what you can do, but there's no more powerful autoscaling configuration for your Laravel app. If you need that, it's a great place to look. Cloud's a little bit harder to differentiate because it is closer to Forge. There's a lot of similar use cases between the two, but here's how I've been explaining it to my clients.

There's a lot of similar use cases between the two, but here's how I've been explaining it to my clients. If you are stressed out by the idea of having to be responsible for a server, even if you have a tool like Forge to make managing it easy, you probably want Cloud. Cloud is ideal for folks who don't wanna deal with managing servers, whether it's because they're not even programmers in the first place, or they just don't wanna deal with twiddling the knobs

because they're not even programmers in the first place, or they just don't wanna deal with twiddling the knobs and fiddling with the settings. Forge on the other hand, is ideal for developers who are happy to occasionally SSH, their servers who may wanna stick 20 side projects in a single server who are glad to have forged spinning up the server, but love knowing that any point they want, they can go in and tweak anything they want whenever they want. Cloud makes it a bit easier than forged

and tweak anything they want whenever they want. Cloud makes it a bit easier than forged to spin these things up, but that ease comes at the cost of a bit of flexibility. They're both great tools, but like any tools, they each have a purpose. So let's talk really briefly about what we're gonna cover in the rest of this course. First, we're gonna start with how deploys work in Laravel, just generally.

First, we're gonna start with how deploys work in Laravel, just generally. And then we're gonna sign up for Forge and spin up our first server and our first sites. We'll take a look at the tasks that are every day that are common for us to take in Forge for the first half of the course. And the second half is gonna cover tasks that are still useful, but maybe not something you're gonna do on every site every time.

that are still useful, but maybe not something you're gonna do on every site every time. So stick around and let's dive in.