Overview

NewsPortal Pro is a full-featured, production-ready news magazine application built on Laravel 12, PHP 8.2, and Bootstrap 5.3. It provides everything a professional publication needs out of the box — editorial workflows, AI enrichment, comment moderation, newsletter management, and a beautiful responsive frontend.

Requirements

Recommended Windows Environments

• Laragon — Best option. Includes PHP 8.2, MySQL 8, Composer in one installer. laragon.org
• XAMPP — Use the PHP 8.2 version. apachefriends.org
• Laravel Herd — Laravel's official local environment. herd.laravel.com

Installation

Option A — One-Command Setup (Recommended)

# Windows — double-click or run in Command Prompt
> setup.bat

# Linux / macOS
$ chmod +x setup.sh && ./setup.sh

The script will prompt you for database credentials, create the database automatically, install all dependencies, run migrations, and seed demo data.

Option B — Manual Steps

# 1. Install dependencies
$ composer install

# 2. Copy environment file
$ cp .env.example .env

# 3. Generate application key
$ php artisan key:generate

# 4. Edit .env with your DB credentials (see below)

# 5. Create database in MySQL
mysql> CREATE DATABASE news_portal CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;

# 6. Run migrations + seed demo data
$ php artisan migrate --seed

# 7. Start the development server
$ php artisan serve
   INFO  Server running on http://127.0.0.1:8000

File Structure

Environment (.env)

Copy .env.example to .env and configure the following key values:

# Application
APP_NAME="News Portal"
APP_URL=http://localhost:8000

# Database
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=news_portal
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=your_password

# AI — also configurable from Admin → Settings → AI
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-4o-mini

# Mail — also configurable from Admin → Settings → Email
MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
MAIL_PORT=587
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
MAIL_USERNAME=you@gmail.com
MAIL_PASSWORD=your_app_password

Roles & Permissions

NewsPortal Pro uses four distinct user roles, each with precisely scoped permissions.

AI Suite — Overview

NewsPortal Pro integrates with OpenAI's Chat Completions API to provide four intelligent publishing features. All AI functionality is handled by App\Services\AIService.

AI Feature Toggles

Configuration

Configure AI from Admin → Settings → AI:

1. Paste your OpenAI API key (from platform.openai.com)
2. Select your preferred model (gpt-4o-mini is cheapest and recommended)
3. Toggle the master switch Enable AI Features ON
4. Toggle individual features as needed

# Manually process AI on all unprocessed articles
$ php artisan news:process-ai

# Process with a limit
$ php artisan news:process-ai --limit=20

# Re-process a specific article by ID
$ php artisan news:reprocess-ai 5

Artisan Commands

Six custom Artisan commands are included in routes/console.php:

Troubleshooting

Syntax error in Blade views

If you see "unexpected token '='" in a Blade view, ensure you are not using inline associative arrays with => inside @foreach directives. Always move them to a @php block first:

// ❌ Causes XAMPP Blade parser issues
@foreach(['key'=>'value'] as $k => $v)

// ✅ Correct approach
@php $arr = ['key' => 'value']; @endphp
@foreach($arr as $k => $v)

Pagination looks unstyled

Ensure AppServiceProvider::boot() contains:

Paginator::useBootstrapFive();

SQLSTATE: Access denied

Double-check DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD in your .env file. For XAMPP, the default is root with no password.

Uploaded images not appearing

Ensure the public/uploads/ directory exists and is writable. On Linux/Mac, run chmod -R 775 public/uploads.

AI features not working

Check: (1) Admin → Settings → AI master switch is ON. (2) API key is set. (3) Your server can reach api.openai.com — some hosts block outbound HTTPS to external APIs.

Changelog