Magatunga - 2 — From Theme to Admin Foundation

We continued building the Magatunga project by transforming the static theme into a living Laravel application. The goal: turn the landing-page prototype into the backbone of a real learning platform with authentication, role and permission logic, and the beginnings of an admin workspace.

The challenge

After the front-end theme was ready, the next step was to bring Laravel’s backend to life.
We needed a foundation that could grow into a three-role system — Admin, Teacher, and Student — with permissions, dashboards, and a course structure flexible enough for both teaching and 1:1 sessions.

What we did

• Set up roles & permissions:
  Integrated spatie/laravel-permission to manage roles (Admin / Teacher / Student) and fine-grained permissions (courses.author, courses.publish, one_to_one.offer).
  This gives us control over who can create, edit, or publish courses — a must for a scalable education platform.

• Built the Admin Dashboard Shell:
  A responsive layout with sidebar, topbar, and avatar menu — ready for mobile.
  Includes a logout button and profile edit link for each user.

• Created the Course Metadata Editor:
  Admins can now create courses with titles, descriptions, prices (in cents server-side), and auto-generated slugs.
  All new courses start as drafts to keep the workflow clean.

• Implemented the Course Builder MVP:
  Courses can now be structured into Modules → Lessons → Blocks.
  Supported block types so far: Text, Video, Audio, Quiz, Assignment, and Upload.
  Blocks can be added, edited via modal dialogs, moved up or down, toggled active/inactive, and previewed.
  After adding or editing, the interface automatically scrolls to the edited element for smooth navigation.

• Soft Delete and Archive Handling:
  Courses can be archived and restored without data loss — for safe content management.

Result

Magatunga has grown from a static landing page into a fully functional Laravel application with its own admin shell and content management structure.
The Admin can create, build, and publish courses without touching code — and the foundation is ready for teacher and student workflows next.