Laravel Forum Package: (Still) Need Discussions on Your Website?

Hello guys. In this video, I want to show you a package I found Laravel Forum. So, this is one of the cases where the package is very old, 11 years old in fact, but still supported in Laravel 13 with the new version 8. But, the problem with such packages, it lacks screenshots. So, this is what I see often by package creators, quick documentation, and there is a separate actually documentation page. So, this is the page of documentation, but how does it actually look? It's all text-based, and I decided to try it out and show it to you. So, if any of you wants a forum on your website in 2026 for whatever reason, this could be the case. So, this is what I got after installed the package, seeded some fake data, added login and logout functionality, and this is the forum you would get. And yes, I know it looks like 20th century. So, the full sentence would be, if on your website you still want a forum in 2026 that would look like it's 1999, this is the package. But, also front end is customizable, and we will try to do that in this video. The installation of the package is pretty simple, composer require, package discovery should be automatic, then you do vendor publish and migration, and then you install UI preset. So, there are two options for UI, Livewire or Blade, if I understand correctly. Both use Tailwind, and there are a few more configuration options. And if you install all of that, you can go and browse through forum. This is how it looks, new thread for example. And yes, this is how it looks. Let's use fake filler Chrome extension, create. There are buttons to pin, rename, and quick reply for example. We can reply to the forum post. We can go to recent threads and reply to someone, for example, specifically reply to this one. Something something. So, like a good old forum. In the database, we have tables like forum posts, forum categories, threads, and then when the threads were read, and also fields like pinned, locked, and other stuff. So, also nothing really fancy. And in your Laravel project, as a result of that, you don't get any public routes. So, it's all in vendor. You don't have much control over it, to be honest. So, it's all in the {slash} forum, and then the package takes care of what works and how inside. There are a few things on top, like API, for example, so you can have the API, and probably build your own front end for the same back end API. So, these are the end points, and these are the parameters listed in the documentation, so you can use that only as a back end, if you wish. Also, interesting for category tree, it uses nested set functionality. This is the package Laravel Nested Set for tree structures. I have a separate video about how it works. I will link that in the description below, but basically, in the database forum categories, we have pretty weird column names in the database, but this is how the tree structure of categories actually work. Pretty interesting separate topic about the algorithm and how it works in Eloquent and Laravel, specifically. And now, let's try to change the visual design, and we can use AI for that. So, if we take only the front end part, we have resources forum, and then we have CSS, JS, and views. So, these are the blades with partials. So, let's try to customize those, and see how far we can get. And I will ask AI to do that. So, I've made my homework, so to speak, and asked Codex GPT 5.5, what are our options for customizations? And it depends on how far you can go, or how far you want to go. Light restyle is easy, complete visual redesign is harder, and new UX then touches the vendor and controllers routes. So, I will prompt Codex for something like this. And this is my prompt. I will make it more visible like this and I will choose 5.5 hind this case because I suspect the model would need to think for a while how to implement that on top of all design. And let's see what will be the result. So, while it is working, in general, my thought about such older packages. So, the package still works and the back end is good, but the front end looks not really modern. So, you have a few options with such packages. First, to fork it and then if you need the back end functionality of form, then build your own front end from scratch. Then also another option is to ask AI to recreate the package functionality without the package. So, I could do that. For example, I could prompt AI go to vendor, look at eloquent structure, look at database tables, and then make it a part first-party part of my application without any package. Then you don't have any dependency, but you do have the logic from the package mostly. Or as I'm doing in this case, I'm taking the package as is as long as it supports Laravel 13 newest version and then I prompt for fundamental changes on top which would make package more usable in 2026. But basically, my point is if you see that some package is not actively supported that much or lacks some functionality with AI as a helper, you can go further with that package as fundamental idea for your project. Now, I will skip this video until the moment where this prompt is actually finished. And this is the part that I want to comment on. So, it predicted to have like 15 files to be changed. Now, I have 59 files changed and it's automatically compacting the context. So, we're running out of context window already. I don't see the context window visible anywhere here in the Codex app. In the Codex CLI, it would show the percentage, but anyway. And it says it's mostly in place. So, hopefully, small details left, and then I will be able to show you the result. Interesting detail, it's showing Bootstrap error classes. So, as I said, the package itself is 11 years old. So, I'm pretty sure there are some older ways, let's put it this way, to do stuff, including old Bootstrap classes. So, that was also needed to be refreshed. And yes, it is done, finally done. It doesn't say in how much time. I would roughly calculate like 15 minutes or even 20 minutes with that many files changed, 60 files. Was it worth it? Let's refresh. So, this was the old forum test. I will leave it in the browser and open a new tab. And if we launch that one, now we have our new forum, which looks like this. And yes, I would say it looks much more like 2026 with some rounded borders here. It all seems to be working, so we can go and reply to someone with even spacing and padding taken care of. So, yeah, this is the result that you can achieve with AI to redesign something older, even from Bootstrap, for example. And this is how the homepage would look like. You can create category, you can do a lot of things here. So, yeah, this is my visually updated forum. And side note, how much it cost on Codex. So, if I refresh my dashboard here, 5-hour usage limit, I'm on $20 plan of Codex ChatGPT. So, before my prompt, this said 84% remaining. So, it has eaten half of my 5-hour usage limit. Is it a lot? Probably. But for the amount of work if I had to do that manually or hire someone, it's a no-brainer to pay that amount. Again, if we compare this original design to this modern design, it's night and day in my opinion. So, yeah, what do you guys think about this Laravel forum package? On the back end it's good, the front end is customizable or regenerated with AI, or do you know any other forum packages for Laravel projects which would include a forum into your existing website? And do we even need forums in 2026 or what is the like new reincarnation maybe if needed of such discussions in modern 21st century? Again, let's discuss in the comments. That's it for this time and see you guys in other videos.