The Laravel Fanboy Who Made NativePHP Possible. The Artisan of the Day Is Shane Rosenthal.

Shane Rosenthal is a senior software engineer who has transformed his passion for Laravel into a groundbreaking project that's changing how developers think about mobile development.

He co-founded NativePHP with Simon Hamp, and they’ve just released Bifrost, a platform for developing and distributing mobile and desktop apps in NativePH. Think of it like Forge for your NativePHP apps.

Based in South Carolina, Shane is also a proud dad, community leader, pilot, and musician who runs the LaravelOnline YouTube channel, sharing his expertise with the broader community.

Laravel Is More Than Code

For Shane (like many other artisans), Laravel has been the foundation of his livelihood for over a decade: "My son will be 16 in December. Since he was two, every meal he's eaten has been paid for by Laravel."

Laravel's influence, however, goes deeper than his work and financial stability. "It changed the way I look at the world in a lot of ways," Shane explains.

He draws inspiration from Jeffrey Way's approach at Laracasts: "The way Jeffrey Way from Laracasts would write a command and the function behind it didn't even exist, right? He would just $user-> some method, and that's how I want to interface with it. So that's what he creates, and then he writes the code behind it to make it work. That's how I do everything in life, right? I want something, I'll set it up the way it should be. And then fill in the blanks, make it work behind the scenes."

The Artisan Mindset

Shane embodies the Laravel Community's Artisan philosophy and is a self-proclaimed fanboy: "Laravel, we’re Artisans, right? We take pride in the craftsmanship in our work, the comments in all the Laravel code from Taylor, the attention to detail."

What also makes him proud is the amount of merch he accumulated over the years: "I've got the lanyards from all the Laracons since 2019, my coffee mug, all of the plush elephants, my 3D-printed Laravel logo. You know I'm a huge fanboy."

NativePHP and Bifrost: Revolutionizing Mobile Development

Shane co-founded Bifrost Technology and NativePHP to solve a fundamental problem: enabling Laravel developers to build native mobile apps without learning new technologies. As Shane and Simon wrote in their announcement blog, Bifrost is "the build service for NativePHP" and "a hosted platform built to take the pain out of building and distributing native apps, for individuals and teams," allowing developers to "build for anything. From anywhere. With PHP!"

The platform addresses a major pain point for cross-platform development. Bifrost makes it possible for "Windows and Linux users to compile their mobile apps for iOS and distribute them to their Apple App Store Connect account easily without needing a Mac." The project has achieved remarkable commercial success, surpassing $200K in sales in its first six months.

Future plans include over-the-air updates, NativePHP for desktop support, automated workflows, screenshot generation, automated testing, and one-click backend APIs.

Transformation Through Innovation

Shane's journey to NativePHP emerged during a significant personal upheaval. "If you look at my life, the last couple of years, things have changed a lot for me. I had major back surgery, I have screws in my back, titanium screws. I got divorced. I’m trying to figure out what life should look like with my son. There’s been a lot of soul-searching, a lot of just following excitement."

This “mantra” of following excitement, as Shane calls it, has become his guiding principle: "I think that's kind of where I got to when NativePHP even started. ‘This is what excites me, and that's what I'm going to do.’ That's the mantra that I've been living by for a while. And it's been paying off."

Building Laravel's Future

Beyond his own projects, Shane's enthusiasm for Laravel's future is infectious: "I'm excited for the future of Laravel. I'm excited to be a part of the future of Laravel. I'm excited about where it's come from, and I'm excited about where it's going, and I'm excited to be included in all of that."

With NativePHP and Bifrost, Shane is not just participating in Laravel's future but actively shaping it, proving that life's biggest challenges can lead to the most innovative solutions.

Your Story Belongs Here

You don't need to have a course, a talk, or a big launch. If Laravel has been part of your journey (a pivot, a side project, a moment of growth), we'd love to hear about it!

Answer Taylor's questions at laravel.com/stories.

We're always looking to feature developers from every corner of the community. Beginners, builders, behind-the-scenes folks. If Laravel helped you do something you're proud of, that's a story worth telling.