Deploy a Laravel App on a VPS | Hostvento Knowledge Base

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a popular tool, called a framework, for building websites in PHP. A framework is like a ready-made kit of parts that saves you time. "Deploy" means moving your finished app from your computer to a live server.

The steps below use Ubuntu. Other systems work in a similar way, with different install commands.

Steps

Update the server and install the needed software:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx mysql-server php-fpm php-mysql php-mbstring php-xml php-curl php-zip unzip git -y

This installs the web server, database, PHP and helper tools.

Install Composer, the tool that downloads Laravel's parts:
```
sudo apt install composer -y
```

Create a database. Open MySQL with sudo mysql, then run:

CREATE DATABASE laravel_db;
CREATE USER 'laravel_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'ChooseAStrongPassword';
GRANT ALL ON laravel_db.* TO 'laravel_user'@'localhost';
EXIT;

Upload your app to /var/www/myapp. You can use Git:

cd /var/www
sudo git clone YOUR_REPOSITORY_URL myapp

Install the app's parts:

cd /var/www/myapp
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Copy the settings file and make a key:

cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

Open .env with a text editor such as nano .env. Fill in DB_DATABASE, DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD. Set APP_ENV=production and APP_DEBUG=false.
Build the database tables:
```
php artisan migrate --force
```

Give the web server write access to two folders:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data storage bootstrap/cache
sudo chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache

Create a site file for Nginx at /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp. Point its root to /var/www/myapp/public, set server_name to your domain, and send PHP requests to PHP-FPM.

Switch the site on and reload Nginx:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

The nginx -t line checks your file for mistakes first.

Point your domain's A record to the VPS IP address. Then open your domain in a browser.

Tip: Always point the web root at the public folder. Never expose the whole app folder, as it holds your private .env file.

Warning: migrate changes your database. Take a backup first if the database already holds real data.

Quick recap

Install Nginx, MySQL, PHP and Composer.
Create a database and upload the app.
Run composer install, set up .env and run migrate.
Fix folder permissions and set the Nginx root to public.
Point your domain to the server.