Laravel is a popular open-source PHP framework designed for building web

applications with clean architecture, scalability, and modern development practices. Laravel features a powerful routing system, Blade templating, Eloquent ORM, API tools, and a built-in queue system—making it ideal for multitasking applications with background processing. Laravel is widely used for both simple websites and complex enterprise solutions.

Installing Laravel on a Hosting Service

To install Laravel on your hosting service, follow these steps:

1. Initialize the project in your www directory using PHP Composer:

# Here we use PHP Composer 8.2 to get the latest Laravel version
composer-php-8.2 create-project laravel/laravel ~/www/test.com.ua

• ~/www/test.com.ua — the destination for your Laravel project
• create-project — Composer command to scaffold a new project
• laravel/laravel — the official Laravel starter template

2. Create a database for your project:

Go to your hosting control panel. In “Tools”, select “Databases”:

Create a new database:

Open the file manager and edit your project’s config (e.g. ~/www/test.com.ua/config/) with your DB parameters:

'mysql' => [
            'driver' => 'mysql', // set to mysql
            'url' => env('DB_URL'),
            'host' => env('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
            'port' => env('DB_PORT', '3306'),
            'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'laravel'), // database name
            'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'didi'),    // username
            'password' => env('DB_PASSWORD', ' '),       // password
            ...

3. Create an .htaccess file in the project root to redirect requests:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ public/ [L]
RewriteRule ((?s).*) public/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

4. Run database migrations:

php-8.2 artisan migrate

5. Open your browser and enter your domain to test it. You should see the default Laravel welcome page:

Installing Laravel on a Server

Before installing, update your system and enable necessary repositories for compatibility and security.

Update packages:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install utilities for managing external repositories:

sudo apt install software-properties-common ca-certificates lsb-release apt-transport-https -y

Add the official repository for the latest PHP versions:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update

Installing Nginx

sudo apt install nginx

Allow HTTP traffic via firewall:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'

Enable Nginx and autostart:

sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

Installing PHP and PHP-FPM

Laravel requires PHP. For multitasking apps, use PHP-FPM. Choose the appropriate version (e.g., PHP 8.2 or 8.3):

sudo apt install php8.2 php8.2-fpm php8.2-cli php8.2-mysql php8.2-mbstring php8.2-xml php8.2-bcmath php8.2-zip php8.2-curl php8.2-redis php8.2-dom

Check PHP-FPM status:

sudo systemctl status php8.2-fpm

Tune performance options in php.ini:

sudo nano /etc/php/8.2/fpm/php.ini

Adjust:

• memory_limit = 512M
• upload_max_filesize = 64M
• post_max_size = 64M
• max_execution_time = 300

Save and restart PHP-FPM:

sudo systemctl restart php8.2-fpm

Installing MySQL

sudo apt install mysql-server

Secure installation:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Create user and DB:

sudo mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE your_database_name CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'your_username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY "your_password";
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON your_database_name.* TO 'your_username'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Installing Composer

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

Check Composer:

composer --version

Installing Redis

sudo apt install redis-server
sudo systemctl start redis-server
sudo systemctl enable redis-server

Check Redis status:

sudo systemctl status redis-server

Installing Supervisor

sudo apt install supervisor
sudo systemctl start supervisor
sudo systemctl enable supervisor

Create a config for queues:

sudo nano /etc/supervisor/conf.d/my-laravel-app-queue.conf

[program:my-laravel-app-queue]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /var/www/html/my-laravel-app/artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3 --timeout=3600
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
numprocs=1
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/html/my-laravel-app/storage/logs/queue.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

Update Supervisor:

sudo supervisorctl reread
sudo supervisorctl update
sudo supervisorctl start my-laravel-app-queue:*

Check worker status:

sudo supervisorctl status

Creating a New Laravel Project

cd /var/www/html
composer create-project laravel/laravel my-laravel-app
cd my-laravel-app

Set up .env (DB, CACHE, QUEUE):

cp .env.example .env
nano .env

APP_NAME="My Laravel App"
APP_ENV=local
APP_KEY=base64:YOUR_GENERATED_APP_KEY_HERE

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=your_database_name
DB_USERNAME=your_username
DB_PASSWORD=your_password

BROADCAST_DRIVER=log
CACHE_DRIVER=redis
QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis
SESSION_DRIVER=file
SESSION_LIFETIME=120

REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1
REDIS_PASSWORD=null
REDIS_PORT=6379

Generate app key:

php artisan key:generate

Run migrations:

php artisan migrate

Nginx Setup for Laravel

Create a config:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/my-laravel-app.conf

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name my-laravel-app.test;

    root /var/www/html/my-laravel-app/public;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    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:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Enable the site:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/my-laravel-app.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Test syntax:

sudo nginx -t

Reload:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Set file permissions

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/my-laravel-app/storage
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/my-laravel-app/bootstrap/cache
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/my-laravel-app/storage
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/my-laravel-app/bootstrap/cache

Visit your domain or http://<server-ip>.

sudo nano /etc/hosts