I tried moving to a newer version and start using with npm and webpack and I got a little lost.

Started using the php framework laravel it has a mix package build in that makes everything very simple.

My advice for backend developers is to use either the laravel framework or standalone npm laravel's mix package.

With a simple command preseyts for vue, react, bootstrap come out of the box to allow you to focus on writing code vs setting up webpack or gulp or grunt and managing that yourself