We recently launched Zip Tutorials, a website where anyone can create a tutorial or how-to guide in minutes! The website allows anyone to create a step-by-step tutorial complete with images that is ready for sharing.
The idea for Zip Tutorials came to me when working with a client. I wanted to share a step-by-step guide with my client but there wasn’t a tool available that would let me do this. Sure, I could always send an email, except that emails don’t always format images properly, which is a necessity if sharing a complex technical process. Since an easy to use tutorial service didn’t seem to exist, I decided to create one!
Zip Tutorials supports public, private and password protected tutorials. Public tutorials are great for sharing with the world. Private tutorials give a little more privacy in that they don’t show up on the site’s listing of latest tutorials, but anyone can still share them by sharing the direct URL to the tutorial. Password protected tutorials offer the most security and require a password before the tutorial can be viewed. This makes them ideal for sharing with clients or other limited groups where privacy is desired.
Zip Tutorials was the first website I launched using the Laravel PHP Framework. Whereas WordPress, which I normally work with, is more of a content management system, Laravel is meant more as a starting point for developers to build their own applications. I had wanted to learn Laravel for a while and Zip Tutorials provided the perfect opportunity to jump in and build something with the Laravel framework.
Developing in Laravel made the site development process go really quick. I went from having the idea for the site to launch in about a week and a half. Tools like Laravel Jetstream for authentication and Grok for assistance in learning Laravel made the process go very quickly.
Overall, I’m proud of the Zip Tutorials website and think it turned out really well. I look forward to exploring the Laravel framework more and building more applications with Laravel in the future.
If you haven’t already, check out Zip Tutorials and create and share your own tutorial with the world!