TALL Stack tips and tutorials

What is the TALL Stack?

The TALL Stack is Tailwind CSS, Alpine js, Laravel and Livewire.

Tailwind CSS Tailwind CSS framework by Adam Wathan.
Alpine js Javascript framework by Celeb Porzio.
Laravel Laravel framework by Taylor Otwell.
Livewire Livewire framework by Caleb Porzio.

The TALL Stack is an alternative approach to building web applications without a full frontend javascript framework. This provides a simpler, more productive development experience while still retaining the perceived speed and responsiveness of single-page applications.

What can I build with the TALL Stack.

I have built a wide variety of projects with the TALL Stack. I built a funded startup the past few years with the TALL Stack. We were able to build a wide variety of features and it performed beautifully at scale. This was with Livewire V2. With the release of Livewire V3 the TALL Stack is ready for any size or scale of project.

Ian Landsman is predicting 2024 is the year of Livewire. I agree there isn't a better framework to build modern web applications.

What about Mobile?

But what about mobile? If you use the TALL Stack you're not going to have an API you can use for both web and your mobile app. Guess what, even if you build your web app with an API it's still not going to be the best API for your mobile app. You are still going to want to build a dedicated API for mobile it's a pipe dream to think a multi-purpose API for web and mobile is going to save you time. First you lose time building a full API for your web app. And then you lose time by trying to use the API built for the web app for the mobile app. It's possible but I think just planning and building an API specifically for your mobile app is the way to go.

Does it scale?

The TALL Stack scales and is performant. There are lots of options for scaling depending on the specifications and needs of your application. The TALL Stack runs great on Laravel Forge and Laravel Vapor. Planetscale is a great option for a scalable database at a reasonable cost.

Security?

The funded startup I built with the TALL Stack required an annual security audit as part of obtaining SOC-2 compliance and meeting requirements set by our customers. Our security audit and pen test came back with only three minor recommendations. We followed security best practices along with Laravel best practices and used Laravel Forge build our infrastructure on AWS. The firm doing the audit said our audit was in their top 0.1% and better than all of the Fortune 500 companies they had audited. At the time we were a team of two developers also handling dev ops.