How to deploy Laravel to server (VPS)

deploy-laravel-en.md

How to deploy Laravel application to Virtual Private Server (VPS)

---

Some things you need :

• Laravel project
• VPS / Virtual Private Server
• Domain (if any)

Here's how to deploy your Laravel application to the server

1. Put your Laravel project into source code management (github/gitlab/others)
   Here I will use my company-management reporsitory.
   https://github.com/alfajrimutawadhi/company-management

2. Create a personal access token
   This token is used to clone your project to the server later. You can directly create a personal access token at https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
   Write notes as you wish and check only the repo section, then immediately click generate at the very bottom.
   After success, copy or save the token for later use
   

3. Setup server
   You can login to the terminal server using ssh, to install the database and some required dependencies

   • Install the database according to your Laravel database (here I use mysql)

     sudo apt-get install mysql-server
     

     *do not forget to create a database after installing this

   • Install PHP-FPM and some PHP extensions

     sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
     sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php
     sudo apt update
     

     *according to the PHP version you need

     sudo apt install php8.1-fpm php8.1-common php8.1-mysql php8.1-xml php8.1-ctype php8.1-curl php8.1-gd php8.1-dom php8.1-cli php8.1-dev php8.1-imap php8.1-mbstring php8.1-soap php8.1-zip php8.1-bcmath php8.1-fileinfo php8.1-pdo php8.1-tokenizer -y
     

   • Install NGINX

     sudo apt install -y nginx
     

   • Install composer

     sudo apt install -y composer
     

4. Clone Laravel application

   • Copy your repository URL
   • Clone your repository into the folder /srv

     git clone <URLrepo> /srv/app
     

   • Enter your github username. Fill password section with personal access token that we created earlier (if needed)

5. Resetup Laravel application

   • Go to your application folder and change the .env.example file to .env

     cd /srv/app
     mv .env.example .env
     

   • Reset .env file (here I use vim)

     vim .env
     

     *Change the APP_DEBUG value to false and fill in the APP_URL with your IP or domain
     

   • Added vendor, migration and optimization folders

     composer update
     composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev
     php artisan migrate
     php artisan key:generate
     php artisan config:cache
     php artisan route:cache
     php artisan view:cache
     sudo chmod -R 775 public && sudo chmod -R 777 storage
     

6. Set NGINX configuration

   vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
   

   • Delete all contents of the file and please paste with the configuration below :

     server {
         listen 80;
         listen [::]:80;
         server_name domain.com; #change with your domain
         root /srv/app/public;
     
         add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
         add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
     
         index index.php;
     
         charset utf-8;
     
         location / {
             try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
         }
     
         location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
         location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
     
         error_page 404 /index.php;
     
         location ~ \.php$ {
             fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
             fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
             include fastcgi_params;
         }
     
         location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
             deny all;
         }
     }

   • restart NGINX

     nginx -s reload
     

Your Laravel application is accessible now 🥳

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Additional

If you have a domain and you want your web application to be accessible using HTTPS, you can follow the method below:

1. Enter your Laravel folder

   cd /srv/app
   

2. Add this code in folder app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php (here I use vim)

   public function boot()
   {
      if(config('app.env') === 'production') {
         \URL::forceScheme('https');
      }
   }

3. Modify the Laravel .env file and re-setup config

   vim .env
   

   change APP_URL to https://domain.com
   
   then reset config

   php artisan config:cache
   

4. Install certbot

   sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
   

5. Create SSL certificate

   certbot --nginx -d domain.com
   

   

6. Reload NGINX

   nginx -s reload
   

Your Laravel web application can be accessed using HTTPS 🚀

Thanks for the guide, trying to find out how my css is working (it isn't right now)

Did you force https ?

Check to see if there's a mixed content error

@Bataino yes, i did force to https, but you can do it another way

Yeah...
@alfajrimutawadhi
What's the other way?

I was referring to @NoelisTired If he did force Https probably he should check his .htaccess file.

@Bataino , you can implement several third parties or packages in Laravel, one of which is octane

What changes are needed when you want to run this on a VPS using a subdomain instead of a domain name?