Jess Allen 🪄

GIVEAWAY TIME! 🎉 I'm giving away 3x 1-year licenses for @phpstorm! To enter, just drop a comment and tell me your favourite PHP package. I'll choose 3 random winners on Monday 4th May 😄

I've just made a PR to Laravel! ⚡ It proposes a new "Via" attribute which could be added to notification classes. It can be used to define hardcoded notification channels without requiring a "via" method. Is this something you'd use if it were merged? 😄

My latest freelance contract has just come to an end this week. So I'm now available to take on new Laravel projects/work! If you're on the lookout for a freelance Laravel dev with plenty of experience, feel free to give me a shout! 😎

How AI Will Impact My Job as a Freelance Web Developer in 2026 🚀 ashallendesign.co.uk/blog/web-devel…

The PR didn't get merged! But I'm planning on writing an article soon to show how you can use Mailtrap for: 👉 Sending single emails in Laravel 👉 Sending bulk emails in Laravel 👉 Testing Laravel emails using Mailtrap sandboxes Aiming to publish it next week 😄

The book has been started, and the cover has been designed by the awesome @Jess_A_Allen 🔥 Time to push it a little to get this book done 💪

GIVEAWAY TIME! 🎉 I'm giving away a copy of The Web Dev's Guide to Freelancing I'll ship it to anywhere in the world! 🌎 To enter, you just need to retweet and like this post. I'll announce the winner next week on Tuesday 6th May 😁

I've known Ash for a while now. He always puts his all into his books. I've equally purchased this myself and already had a thumb through today, and I'm likely to be listening to the audio book version during my drive to Manchester tomorrow. If you've always dreamt of more dev freedom, this book is a great place to get answers and ideas.

The Web Dev's Guide to Freelancing is now available to buy! 🎉 👉web-dev-freelancing.com Learn tips, tricks, and strategies you can use to launch your freelance career! 🔥 20% discount code: FREELANCE20

Releasing tomorrow! 🎉 I'm getting really nervous (and excited) now! 😄

I've just published the first 2 freelancer interviews! 🎉 You can check them out at: web-dev-freelancing.com/watch Huge thanks to @simonhamp and @peterfox for being guests. I really appreciate you taking time out of your days to do the interviews! 👇 Video links below! [1/4]

Having a dabble at video again! I've recorded a quick video about the "Freelance Rate Calculator" tool I built recently 🔧

I’m a big believer in sharing your wins. But I’m also a big believer that if you do that, you need to be comfortable sharing your losses too! So I wanted to write an honest and vulnerable post about my pre-order launch that absolutely flopped yesterday. I woke up yesterday feeling really pumped (and nervous) about launching the pre-order site for my new book. I worked like crazy over the weekend to make sure everything was ready. I finalised the site, prepared an email, wrote a blog post, and then triple-checked the waiting list and pre-order forms worked. I sent out the email and posted on socials at 3pm (UK time). 24 hours after broadcasting, these are the stats: -> Email recipients - 6,264 (128 clicked through) -> LinkedIn post impressions - 439 -> X post impressions - 1,320 -> Landing page visitors - 410 -> Pre-order sales - 12 -> Conversion rate - 2.9% -> People who joined the waiting list: 1 I’ve never done a pre-launch before, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. But after hearing the huge successes that some people have had, I had some (naive) optimism. But after having such a low amount of sales, it’s kinda taken the wind out of my sails. Here are some of my key takeaways from the pre-launch yesterday: -> The impressions and click-throughs from the X and LinkedIn posts were incredibly low. I need to figure out: Was it the time of the day I posted? Am I being penalised for posting a link? Maybe people just aren’t interested in the subject of the book? -> My content is mainly Laravel/PHP focused. So is this “freelance” type of content not something people are interested in? -> Is this to be expected for a pre-launch for a book that’s still in its early days? Am I comparing myself to outliers that have done exceedingly well? -> Have I priced the book too high? -> I’m mostly shocked that I only had 1 person join the waiting list. Maybe there’s just not enough interest in this topic with my existing audience? -> I’ve definitely not spent enough time trying to create any hype around this book. This is a topic I feel quite passionate about. But I’ve struggled to come up with social/blog posts that don’t make me look like a grifter. Of course, 12 sales are better than 0, and I’m extremely grateful for those 12 sales. But I had an arbitrary goal in my head of at least 20 sales. As crushing and humbling as it feels now, I feel like this is a great learning opportunity for me though. So hopefully I can take some lessons from this to make sure the real launch is awesome!

🔥 Exciting announcement: "The Web Dev's Guide to Freelancing" is now available to pre-order! 🚀 web-dev-freelancing.com

Let's build this community! I'm prepping the page on the site now 😎

I'm getting there with the new landing page! I'm hoping to release it at the end of the month 😎

"Whereas your traditional tests test the functionality of your application, architecture tests test the structure of your application." —@AshAllenDesign Learn how to write architecture tests in Laravel with Pest, a popular PHP testing framework. 🔗👇

@Abmankendrick @iamAbiodunAA @Daviowhite @its_YOGO I’d say A 🙂 I think the clickable area for B is too small & the A is a more recognisable layout that users will be familiar with!

Which is Better Leave your comment below 😀

Looks like I better start planning lol. Might need some help from @Jess_A_Allen on this one 👀

If this post gets 10 likes I’ll build a spiritual successor to Google Reader that’s accessible, practical, and 100% free and open source

Processes and Artisan Commands in Laravel 🚀 ashallendesign.co.uk/blog/processes…