Athena – Laravel Creative Multilingual Blog

Introduction

Athena is a Laravel-based creative multilingual blog template that offers a unique and modern design, perfect for bloggers and content creators who want to showcase their work in multiple languages. With Athena, you can easily create a multilingual blog that is both visually appealing and easy to navigate. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of setting up and using the Athena template, including how to install it, configure the multilingual features, and customize the design to fit your needs.

Step 1: Installing Athena

To install Athena, you will need to have Laravel installed on your server or local machine. If you don't have Laravel installed, you can follow the official Laravel installation guide.

Once you have Laravel installed, you can download the Athena template from the official website. Extract the downloaded files to the public directory of your Laravel project.

Next, run the following command in your terminal to install the required dependencies:

composer install

This will install the necessary packages required by Athena.

Step 2: Configuring the Multilingual Features

To configure the multilingual features of Athena, you will need to create a new file called lang.php in the config directory of your Laravel project. This file will contain the language settings for your blog.

In the lang.php file, add the following code:

<?php

return [
    'en' => [
        'name' => 'English',
        'locale' => 'en',
        'fallback_locale' => 'en',
    ],
    'fr' => [
        'name' => 'French',
        'locale' => 'fr',
        'fallback_locale' => 'fr',
    ],
];

This code defines two languages, English and French, with their respective names, locales, and fallback locales.

Next, you will need to create a new file called routes.php in the routes directory of your Laravel project. This file will contain the routing configuration for your blog.

In the routes.php file, add the following code:

<?php

Route::group(['prefix' => 'lang/{lang}'], function () {
    Route::get('/', 'HomeController@index');
    Route::get('/{slug}', 'HomeController@show');
});

This code defines two routes, one for the homepage and one for individual blog posts, with a language prefix.

Step 3: Customizing the Design

To customize the design of Athena, you will need to edit the resources/views directory of your Laravel project. This directory contains the Blade templates that make up the design of your blog.

To customize the design, you can edit the following files:

• resources/views/layouts/master.blade.php: This file contains the main layout of your blog, including the header, footer, and sidebar.
• resources/views/partials/header.blade.php: This file contains the header section of your blog, including the logo and navigation menu.
• resources/views/partials/footer.blade.php: This file contains the footer section of your blog, including the copyright information and social media links.

You can customize the design of these files by adding your own CSS and HTML code.

Step 4: Creating Content

To create content for your blog, you will need to create new files in the resources/views/home directory of your Laravel project. This directory contains the Blade templates for individual blog posts.

To create a new blog post, you can create a new file called post.blade.php in the resources/views/home directory. This file will contain the content of your blog post, including the title, date, and text.

Here is an example of what the post.blade.php file might look like:

@extends('layouts.master')

@section('title', $post->title)

@section('content')
    <h1>{{ $post->title }}</h1>
    <p>{{ $post->text }}</p>
@endsection

This code defines a new Blade template that extends the master.blade.php file and defines a title and content section.

Step 5: Publishing Your Blog

Once you have created your content and customized the design of your blog, you can publish it by running the following command in your terminal:

php artisan serve

This will start a development server that will allow you to view your blog at http://localhost:8000.

You can also deploy your blog to a production server by running the following command:

composer dump-autoload

This will dump the autoloaded classes and make them available to your production server.

That's it! With these steps, you should now have a fully functional multilingual blog using the Athena template.