(This is part of a larger guide to deploying a Laravel and Vue.js web application.)
This article covers application-specific steps needed to prepare your machine for hosting a Laravel application. You’ll need to go through these steps for every Laravel application you place on your server.
Before beginning, you should have performed the one-time software installation covered in the previous article.
Create a non-root user to manage your Laravel application; covered in a dedicated article on setting up a user.
For orientation, here’s the Git and deployment workflow we’ll use in this guide:
/home/laravel/repo/laravel.gi./srv/www/ directory from which Nginx will serve your app to the public Web.We’ll create the necessary directory structure in this step, and defer the post-receive Git hook to a later article on automating deployment.
Note: The Git workflow used in this guide is originally inspired by Farhan Hasin Chowdhury’s guide to deploying a Laravel web app on a VPS (which in turn seems to be based on J. Alexander Curtis’s guide to deploying a Laravel 5.3 app on a LEMP stack). I encourage you to read both guides.
First create a bare Git repository to which you’ll push production code:
# Create directory for your serverside Git repo.
# The ~/repo/ directory is just convention—use whatever you like.
laravel@server$ mkdir -p ~/repo/laravel.git
# Initialize a bare Git repository
laravel@server$ cd ~/repo/laravel.git
laravel@server$ git init --bare
Note that we created a bare Git repo.
For our purposes, a bare Git repo is a repo without a working tree.
In fact, a bare repo contains the same files and directory structure you would normally find inside the .git folder of a standard Git repo.
Why use a bare repo?
Our motivation is simple: since we won’t be doing any development work on the server, there is no reason to keep a working tree on the server (you should be editing your app’s source code only on your development machine).
There is one more minor convenience: we’ll be working with Git hook files as part of our deployment workflow; while a normal Git repo hides these hook files away in the hidden .git folder, a bare Git repo keeps them in plain sight, and thus easier to access.
Using bare repos is common practice on servers to which you will push code from a development machine (particularly in collaborative workflows involving many people), but not develop any code on the server itself.
See this section of the Git Book and this StackOverflow question for more on using bare repos;
a deeper appreciation of bare repos requires some familiarity with Git concepts like the working tree, git checkout, and remote-tracking branches.
(There would also be nothing terribly wrong with using a standard Git repo on the server—you’d just have an unnecessary working tree taking up space and getting in your way, and Git hook scripts hidden away in the .git folder.)
Then create the directories in /srv/www/ from which you’ll serve the app:
# Create serverside directory structure for deployment.
laravel@server$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/laravel
laravel@server$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/laravel/releases
laravel@server$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/laravel/shared/storage
laravel@server$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/laravel/shared/storage/framework
laravel@server$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/laravel/shared/storage/framework/sessions
laravel@server$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/laravel/shared/storage/framework/views
laravel@server$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/laravel/shared/storage/framework/cache
The directory structure probably looks weird. For now just trust me—the directory structure is intentional, and we’ll explain the structure and motivation behind it in detail when covering deployment.
/srv/www?
I’m using /srv/www/ because the Linux filesystem hierarchy standard (a standard for how to organize your filesystem on a Linux machine) recommends /srv for storing data served by your computer, and the /srv/www/ subdirectory for web sites and applications served over the World Wide Web.
Note that /var/www/ is also a common location from which to serve web apps and web sites, and indeed you’ll find /var/www/ used in many tutorials online.
Use whichever you prefer.
Set up a MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite database; covered in a dedicated article on setting up a database.
.env fileCreate a .env file to configure your app’s production environment;
covered in a dedicated article on creating a .env file.
Apply a few ownership and permission settings needed to run a Laravel app; covered in a dedicated article on permissions.
Create an Nginx config file for your app; covered in a dedicated article on Nginx.
Make the DNS changes to server your app from a custom domain name; covered in a dedicated article on setting up a domain name.
Use Certbot to configure HTTPS connections to your website; covered in a dedicated article on setting up HTTPS.
The next phase of the tutorial covers app deployment.
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The original writing and media in this series is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.