I just watched all the laravel beginner introduction videos again and of course I can see why people like it. There are template libraries like twiggy that accomplish some of the things that blade does in terms of markup. I am not keen on template systems myself either, but I can see where they have their uses. I do know what you mean by the 'long in the tooth' comment, and I am very much looking forward to CI4 and the changes that will bring. Ellis Lab seemed to do their best to kill off CI, before finally handing it over, and CI3 was very much an overhaul with massive amounts of bug fixing. CI4, I suspect, is going to really bring the power of php to the fore, and we are going to have a much more flexible beast to ride.
Anyway, glad you solved the issue. (And welcome back to CI of course).
