Building a Custom CMS with Laravel: How to Create a Content Management System from Scratch
Content Management Systems (CMS) power a massive portion of the web—from blogs and documentation platforms to full-fledged business sites. While off-the-shelf solutions like WordPress or Drupal offer convenience, many developers and companies prefer custom CMS platforms that provide greater control, flexibility, scalability, and security.
If you're a Laravel developer (or aspiring to become one), building your own CMS is not only a powerful learning experience but also a way to tailor a system that fits your exact needs.
In this guide, we’ll walk through how to build a custom CMS from scratch using Laravel, the most popular PHP framework today.
Why Build a Custom CMS with Laravel?
Laravel provides an elegant and expressive structure that makes development faster and more enjoyable. A custom CMS gives you:
- Complete control over the database schema, content structure, and user access.
- Clean, modern, maintainable code instead of inherited legacy systems.
- Flexibility to build only what you need—no unnecessary plugins.
- Strong security thanks to Laravel’s built-in authentication, hashing, and CSRF protection.
- Performance optimization tailored to your use case.
If you want a CMS that grows with your business or project, Laravel is an excellent foundation.
1. Setting Up Your Laravel Environment
Start by creating a fresh Laravel project.
Configure your database credentials in the .env file and migrate:
At this point, you have a clean Laravel scaffold with authentication and database connectivity ready to go.
2. Planning Your CMS Structure
Before coding, define what your CMS should include. Most systems need:
- User authentication and roles (Admin, Editor)
- Post/page management (CRUD operations)
- Categories or tags
- Media uploads
- SEO fields (optional)
- A frontend site to display content
- An admin panel to manage everything
Start small—posts, categories, and image uploads are enough for a fully functional CMS. You can always extend it later.
3. Adding Authentication
Laravel Breeze or Jetstream makes authentication setup straightforward. For a simple CMS, Breeze is perfect:
You now have login, registration, password reset, and a dashboard. Next, you can add an is_admin column to differentiate administrators from regular users.
4. Creating Models and Migrations
Posts
Use Laravel's artisan command:
Edit the migration to include fields like title, slug, excerpt, and body:
Categories
Similar approach:
Add a pivot table to connect posts and categories:
With this structure, each post can belong to multiple categories.
Run your migrations:
5. Building the Admin Panel
A CMS needs a backend interface where content creators can manage posts.
Create admin controllers:
Group admin routes with middleware to protect them:
In your views folder, create Blade templates for:
- Listing posts
- Creating/editing posts
- Managing categories
Laravel’s Blade syntax makes this simple and elegant.
6. Handling File Uploads
Most CMS platforms require handling images for posts (featured images, banners, etc.).
Add an image_path column to posts:
In your controller:
Make sure your storage link is configured:
Now your CMS supports uploading and displaying images.
7. Building the Frontend
Create public routes:
In your PostController:
Build a simple frontend using Blade templates:
- Blog home page
- Single post page
- Category filter page
This gives your CMS a working public-facing website.
8. Enhancing Your CMS with Extra Features
Once the fundamentals are in place, you can extend your CMS with:
- Role-based permissions
- SEO metadata fields
- WYSIWYG editor (TinyMCE, CKEditor, Quill)
- Post scheduling
- Dark/light admin theme
- Reusable page blocks
Because it’s custom-built, you're free to tailor it however you want.
Final Thoughts
Building a custom CMS with Laravel gives you complete power over content management while keeping your codebase clean, modern, and scalable. Whether you’re developing a personal blog, a corporate website, or a multi-author publishing system, Laravel provides all the tools you need to craft a feature-rich platform from scratch.
