About
Genesis is just my customized
symfony new --webapp
. Nothing revolutionary, just everything I set up on every new project, ready to go. No more rebuilding auth for the 100th time.
Tech stack
- Symfony 7.3 / PHP 8.3 - Always the latest stable version
- TailwindCSS V4 - Because I'm tired of writing CSS
- Twig - With a custom theme that works directly with Tailwind
- Doctrine ORM - The standard, nothing fancy
- Webpack Encore - For asset building
- Symfony Mailer - Basic transactional emails
What's already done
Complete auth
- Login/Register that work from the first try
- Standard Symfony validation on forms
- Password reset by email (secure token)
- Mandatory email verification
- CSRF active everywhere
User profile
- Basic but functional profile page
- Email change + auto re-verification
- Password change
- DiceBear avatar (identicon)
- Delete account in danger zone
Basic UI/UX
- Consistent Tailwind V4 design system
- Modular Twig components (button, icon, etc)
- Self-closing flash messages
- Responsive navigation with mobile menu
- Complete header and footer
SEO & Meta
- Favicons all sizes (Apple, Android, etc)
- Open Graph meta tags for social networks
- Configured Twitter Cards
- Canonical and hreflang tags for i18n
- JSON-LD structured data
Dev tools
- Makefile with useful commands
- Clean and documented .env
- Organized MVC code structure
- Minified assets in prod with Webpack Encore
- Working hot reload
Included branding
- Logo and variants (light/dark)
- Consistent color palette
- Social media covers
- Favicons all platforms
- Documented design system
Production ready
- Pre-configured Apache pack
- Configured Monolog logs
- Custom error pages (404, 500)
- HTTPS ready
- Optimized cache config
Internationalization (i18n)
- Multi-language support (FR/EN by default)
- Localized routes (/a-propos vs /en/about)
- Default locale without prefix (fr)
- Language switching in footer
- Context-organized translations
- Language-adapted meta tags
- Automatic canonical URLs and hreflang
Advanced security
- Strict CSP (Content Security Policy) via Nelmio
- XSS and clickjacking protection
- HTTP security headers (X-Frame-Options, etc.)
- Configured referrer policy
- External redirects protection
- Custom cookies signing
- Mixed HTTP/HTTPS content blocking
Why Genesis
After years of redoing the same configs on every project, I decided to centralize everything once and for all. Genesis is not a framework, it's literally a `symfony new` with everything I systematically add in the first 2 hours of a project.
The goal is to be able to clone, run `make install`, and start coding the real business logic directly. No time wasted on auth, emails, design system or favicons.
What's voluntarily missing
No Docker because I already have my environments configured. No CI/CD because it depends on where I deploy. No tests because I add PHPUnit when I need it. No API Platform because not all my projects need an API.
Genesis stays minimal on purpose. It's a base, not a gas factory. I add what's needed, when needed, project by project.
Typical use cases
- New side-project to launch quickly
- POC for a client who wants to see fast
- Testing an idea without wasting time on the base
- Small SaaS with auth and payment (Stripe to add)
- Rebuilding an old project in modern
Note
Genesis is not public and probably never will be. It's my personal tool, configured exactly as I like it. If you want something similar, make your own. It's the best way to have exactly what you need, no more, no less.
I try to set up consistent branding for each of my projects, even though I'm not a designer. I make the logos, icons and covers myself (worth what it's worth). At least it's unique and gives an identity to the project.
Genesis — Symfony Boilerplate.