Two open-source projects shaped Eziline's 2012. Twitter Bootstrap gave every project the same responsive grid and components, and Laravel (version 3 in 2012, with version 4 in beta by year end) gave the PHP team a modern framework with routing, an ORM and migrations. Together they turned custom development from craft into a repeatable process.
A framework for the front end
Bootstrap's twelve-column grid, navigation, forms and modals meant a developer could build a clean, responsive admin panel without waiting for a designer. We used it for the back office of nearly every web application, while client-facing pages still got bespoke design. It also made our estimates more reliable: a screen built from known components costs a known amount.
A framework for the back end
Moving the PHP work onto Laravel was a bigger change. Composer brought dependency management, Eloquent replaced hand-written SQL in most places, migrations made database changes reviewable and repeatable, and the structure made it practical for several developers to work on one codebase. Projects that had previously been one person's work became team work, with code review and shared conventions.
What it meant for clients
- Faster delivery of the first working version, because the plumbing was already there.
- Systems that another developer could pick up later, which matters for long-running business applications.
- A clear upgrade path as PHP and the framework moved on.
Around the studio the year was steady growth: more developers, a first dedicated tester, and a client list that increasingly included organisations outside the twin cities. The habits set in 2012, frameworks, conventions, version control and review, are still how the team works, just with different version numbers.
Looking ahead
Standardisation created a new possibility: if the admin panels were all built the same way, they could become one product. We ended 2012 with early discussions about packaging the business management features that appeared in project after project, inventory, sales, accounts, HR, into something configurable rather than bespoke. It would take until 2015 to become the ERP, POS and hospital products, but the idea dates from here. More immediately, the front end was about to change again. JavaScript frameworks that rendered whole interfaces in the browser were maturing, and our dashboards, which reloaded a page for every action, felt slow by comparison. The team scheduled time to learn AngularJS in the new year. And with more overseas clients, the question of a registered foreign entity came up for the first time, though it would be 2017 before it was answered.
