Laravel 12 Folio for Beginners: A Simpler Way to Build Pages

You're working on a new Laravel project. You're excited, but the usual steps of setting up routes, controllers, and views start to feel like a chore. Wouldn't it be amazing if you could just create a file and boom — it's a page?

That's exactly what Laravel Folio offers.

In this blog post, you'll discover how Laravel Folio simplifies page-based routing, why it's a game-changer for beginners, and how you can use it in real-world projects with ease.

🔍 What Is Laravel Folio?

Laravel Folio is a new feature introduced in Laravel 12 that brings page-based routing to your application. Instead of manually defining routes and controllers, you just create Blade files inside a special folder, and Folio turns them into web pages automatically.

Think of it like how Next.js or Nuxt.js works — your file structure is your routing structure.

📅 Why Should Beginners Care?

If you're new to Laravel, routing can feel overwhelming: routes/web.php, controllers, method naming, and view connections. Folio removes that mental load.

With Folio, You:

• ✅ Don't need to write a single route.
• ✅ Skip the controller setup (unless you want to).
• ✅ Just focus on what the user sees: your Blade templates.

This means less boilerplate, faster development, and more fun.

🔧 How to Set Up Laravel Folio (Step-by-Step)

1. Install Folio

Make sure you're using Laravel 12, then install Folio via Composer:

composer require laravel/folio
php artisan folio:install

This will create a resources/views/pages directory — the magic starts here.

2. Create Your First Page

Let’s say you want to make a greeting page:

Create this file:

resources/views/pages/greeting.blade.php

Add some HTML:

<h1>Hello, Laravel Folio!</h1>

Now visit /greeting in your browser. It just works! ✨

📌 Real-Life Use Cases

🌟 1. Landing Pages for Marketing

Need to whip up a landing page for a campaign? Just drop a new .blade.php file and you're done.

📚 2. Documentation or Help Center

Use Folio to build a simple, organized static docs site with nested folders.

🤠 3. Admin Dashboard Pages

Quickly scaffold pages under pages/admin/... and protect them with middleware (like auth).

🌐 4. Localized Subdomains

Folio even supports mounting routes on subdomains like fr.example.com for multi-language sites.

🎓 Dynamic Pages (With Parameters)

Let’s build a dynamic user profile page.

Run this command:

php artisan folio:page "users/[id]"

This creates:

resources/views/pages/users/[id].blade.php

Inside it:

<h1>Welcome, user #{{ $id }}</h1>

Visit /users/42 and see the dynamic ID in action.

⛔ Protecting Pages With Middleware

You can apply middleware like auth to pages in two ways:

Option 1: Inline

At the top of your Blade file:

<?php
use function Laravel\Folio\middleware;
middleware(['auth']);
?>

Option 2: Globally

In routes/folio.php:

Folio::path('resources/views/pages')->middleware([
  'admin/*' => ['auth'],
]);

🤔 Behind the Scenes: How Folio Works

• Folio scans your pages directory.
• It auto-generates routes based on filenames.
• You can use render hooks and route model binding.
• Middleware and naming are fully supported.

Basically, it's all the power of Laravel routing with none of the setup.

💪 Best Practices & Tips

• Use folio:list to view all registered Folio routes.
• Name your routes with name('route.name') for easy linking.
• Use nested folders to organize pages like /admin/settings.
• Don’t overuse inline middleware — prefer route-level middleware for clarity.

📊 Summary: Why You Should Try Folio

Laravel Folio helps you focus on building pages, not plumbing code.

🎓 Ready to Try It Out?

If you're just getting started with Laravel or want to build fast, beautiful pages without the overhead, Folio is a fantastic tool.

Try creating a few pages in your next Laravel project and see how much faster your workflow becomes.