How to Deploy a Laravel App to a VPS

Step 1: PHP, Composer and Nginx

After connecting to your server with SSH:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx git unzip \
  php8.3-fpm php8.3-cli php8.3-mysql php8.3-mbstring php8.3-xml \
  php8.3-curl php8.3-zip php8.3-bcmath php8.3-intl php8.3-redis
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

If your project needs a different PHP version, change the 8.3 in the package names; we cover running more than one version in our How to change the PHP version guide. If you use PostgreSQL, install php8.3-pgsql instead of php8.3-mysql.

Step 2: Get the code onto the server

Create the application's folder and pull the code from the Git repository:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/app
sudo chown $USER:www-data /var/www/app
git clone git@github.com:user/app.git /var/www/app
cd /var/www/app
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

We cover adding a deploy key to the server that can only read that repository, and automating deployments, in our How to deploy with Git guide. If you build your front-end files with Vite, also add the npm ci && npm run build step.

Step 3: .env settings

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

The most important settings for production:

APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://yourdomain.com

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=app
DB_USERNAME=app
DB_PASSWORD=a-strong-password

• APP_DEBUG=false: This must be off in production. If it's left on, error pages can show visitors configuration details, including passwords.
• APP_KEY: Created with key:generate. If you lose this key, encrypted data and sessions can't be read; back it up somewhere safe.
• If you use Redis, set the CACHE_STORE, SESSION_DRIVER and QUEUE_CONNECTION values to redis; see our What is Redis? article for details.

Never add the .env file to the Git repository.

Step 4: Database, permissions and caching

php artisan migrate --force
php artisan storage:link
sudo chown -R $USER:www-data storage bootstrap/cache
sudo chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache
php artisan optimize

• migrate --force: Creates the database tables in production; --force skips the confirmation prompt.
• storage:link: Creates the public/storage link so that uploaded files can be reached from the web.
• Permissions: The web server needs to be able to write to the storage and bootstrap/cache folders. Don't give the whole project 777.
• optimize: Speeds up the application by building the configuration, route and view caches. Run this command again after changing the .env file.

Step 5: Nginx configuration

Create the /etc/nginx/sites-available/app file. Note that the web root is the public folder, not the project itself:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name yourdomain.com;
    root /var/www/app/public;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
        deny all;
    }
}

Enable the site:

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

Making the project folder the web root instead of public can let your .env file be read from the internet. We cover the basics of Nginx in our How to install Nginx guide.

Step 6: SSL

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com

Certbot gets the certificate, updates the Nginx configuration for HTTPS and sets up automatic renewal. See our What is an SSL certificate? article for details.

Step 7: Queue worker and scheduler

Queue worker: Runs jobs like sending email and processing files in the background. Create the /etc/systemd/system/app-queue.service file:

[Unit]
Description=Laravel Queue Worker
After=network.target

[Service]
User=www-data
Group=www-data
Restart=always
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/app
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable --now app-queue

Scheduler: A single cron line that runs every minute is enough for Laravel's scheduled tasks. Add it with sudo crontab -u www-data -e:

* * * * * cd /var/www/app && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

We explain how cron works in our What is cron? article.

Deploying updates

When you deploy a new version, follow these steps:

cd /var/www/app
php artisan down
git pull
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan optimize
php artisan queue:restart
php artisan up

queue:restart makes the queue workers use the new code. We cover collecting these steps in a script and automating them with GitHub Actions in our How to deploy with Git guide. Before deployments that include database changes, don't forget to back up the database.

Nodesty servers for Laravel

Nodesty AMD Ryzen 9 9950X VPS plans give PHP requests low response times with high single-core speed, while AMD EPYC 7763 VPS plans offer plenty of RAM for running the application, database, Redis and queue workers on the same server. With full root access, NVMe storage, nShield DDoS protection and free daily backups kept for 7 days, you can deploy your Laravel projects with confidence.