How to Install and Configure Laravel with LEMP on Ubuntu 16.04 / 18.04 LTS / 19.10 / 20.04 LTS

Laravel is an open-source PHP framework that provides a set of tools and resources to build modern PHP applications. In this guide, you’ll install and configure a new Laravel application on an Ubuntu 18.04 server, using Composer to download and manage the framework dependencies.

In order to complete the configuration, you will first need to perform the following tasks on your Ubuntu 18.04 server.

First logged into your remote system via ssh (Secure Shell).

ssh root@server_ip_address

Let’s begin by updating server’s package index

sudo apt-get update

Installation

Step 1: Install a LEMP (Nginx, Php & MySQL) Stack

If you haven’t set this up yet, you can follow my story on How to install Linux Nginx, MySQL, PHP (LEMP Stack) on Ubuntu. Please follow the Nginx, Php & MySQL installing processes only.

Step 2: Enable remote Login to MySQL Database Server

To complete this step, please follow my story on How to enable remote Login to MySQL Database Server in Ubuntu / Debian. You really need to do this for database connection purpose 😀 You can test the remote connection using MySQL Workbench

Step 3: Install Composer

sudo apt-get install composer zip unzip -y

Step 4: Install Laravel

Install laravel via composer command

cd /var/www/html
composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel LaraApp
composer install

Or, you can git clone from your repo url 😇

cd /var/www/html
sudo git clone [Your repository URL] .
cd [Your Repository Name]
composer install
composer dump-autoload

Step 5: Configure Laravel

Open the .env file using your command. Here we’ll use nano command here

nano .env

Paste the below code in .env

If you want to generate a new secure key for APP_KEY, you can use the php artisan key:generate command.

APP_NAME=LaraApp
APP_ENV=development
APP_KEY=APPLICATION_UNIQUE_KEY_DONT_COPY
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://domain_or_IP

LOG_CHANNEL=stack

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=dbOne
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=passcode_here

...

Once environment is done, please run below command to migrate app Database schema

php artisan migrate

In a development or testing environment, you can leave the APP_DEBUG option enabled, as this will give you important debug information while testing the application from a browser. The APP_ENV variable should be set to development or testing in this case.

In a production environment, you should disable the APP_DEBUG option, because it shows to the final user sensitive information about your application. The APP_ENV in this case should be set to production.

If you use ‘#’/ ‘@’ or any punctuation symbol then put your passcode between double quotes “passcode_here”

Step 6: Permit write access

Run below command to permit write access to the storage and cache folders, where Laravel stores application-generated files

sudo chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/html/[directory]/storage
sudo chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/html/[directory]/bootstrap/cache

Step 7: Configure Nginx to serve the application

sudo rm -rf /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
sudo rm -rf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/myLaraApp

The following configuration file contains the recommended settings for Laravel applications on Nginx

server {
listen 80;
root /var/www/html/[directory]/public;
index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
server_name _;
#Or write the above line as server_name [server_IP][domain_name];
location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
   # I am using php7.4-fpm, you can use other versions too
}
location ~ /\.ht {
    deny all;
}
}

Step 8: Enable the file by linking to the sites-enabled dir

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myLaraApp /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Step 9: Test Nginx config

sudo nginx -t

You should see output like this

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

If the test failed then check the Nginx configuration step again.

Step 10: Do not forget to restart your Nginx server

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Step 11: Customize your the application

Open the main route file, routes/web.php

nano routes/web.php

Then update the file with the following content

<?php

/*
|-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Web Routes
|-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
| routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
| contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
|
*/

Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('welcome');
});

Routes are defined within this file using the static method Route::get, which receives a path and a callback function as arguments.

Now go to your browser and access the application using the server’s domain name or IP address

http://server_domain_or_IP

If you want to activate SSL certificate on your domain/app, please read this story.

Have fun 🔥 💪

If you have any query, please put in below. Find me on Github.