In this episode, we set up the basic layout for our app before diving into the main code. Starting off, we clear out the default welcome view to make room for our own structure, and rename the relevant Blade templates and controllers for a cleaner setup. Once that's sorted, we switch up the routing so everything points to our new home controller and view.
Next, we bring in Tailwind CSS for styling. We go through the Tailwind installation steps for a Laravel project, updating the necessary config files, hooking Tailwind into our build process, and making sure the styles actually show up by tweaking our Blade template to reference the compiled stylesheet.
With Tailwind working, we create a reusable layout component using Laravel's components feature—this will be the base for all our pages going forward. We set up a grid layout with a sidebar for navigation and a main content area, making sure the structure is flexible and reusable. The sidebar gets some navigation items and placeholder user info, and we add a slot for page-specific headers and content.
Finally, we style up the navigation, hook up some example links, and show how the layout helps keep everything consistent as we add more pages. By the end of the episode, we've got a solid, styled base layout we can reuse throughout the rest of the app. It's not responsive yet, but it's a great foundation to build on.