Deploying Laravel on Linode, Vultr, DigitalOcean etc with LEMP Stack

Using any cloud hosting provider—Linode, Vultr, DigitalOcean, etc.—this cheatsheet offers detailed instructions on how to deploy and configure a Laravel application on an Ubuntu OS running an LEMP stack.

Prerequisite

Any cloud hosting account that you can create Compute VPS Instance
Amazon Webservice account with a created EC2 VPS instance (Ubuntu 20 or later is much recommended).
Linode account with a created virtual server (Ubuntu 20 or later is much recommended).
DigitalOcean account with a created VPS instance (Ubuntu 20 or later is much recommended).
Knowledge on Basic server administration.
Git installed on your local machine.
A Laravel application hosted on GitHub (e.g., "laravel_yourapp").

Note:

Example we have an application called "laravel_yourapp". Change the "laravel_yourapp" for your website/domain name or Laravel app name.

Initial Server Setup

Create a VPS instance:
- Choose Ubuntu 20.04 as the operating system.
- Follow the wizard to create the VPS instance.
Access Your VPS instance:
- Open your terminal and use SSH to access your VPS instance:
```
ssh root@your_VPS instance_ip
```

Update Server Packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y # optional

Install NGINX Web Server

sudo apt install nginx

# Start NGINX and Enable it.
sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

# Check if NGINX status is running
sudo systemctl status nginx

Install MySQL:

sudo apt install mysql-server
sudo mysql_secure_installation # modify some insecure defaults

Change root mysql password:

sudo mysql
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'your_password';
mysql -u root -p # Access mysql

Install PHP and Required Extensions:

To Download Other Versions of PHP
```
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
```
Latest Version

sudo apt install php php-fpm php-mysql php-common php-bcmath php-ctype php-json php-mbstring php-openssl php-pdo php-tokenizer php-xml php-zip php-gd

If you want specific version of PHP like 7.4

sudo apt install php7.4 php7.4-fpm php7.4-mysql php7.4-common php7.4-bcmath php7.4-ctype php7.4-json php7.4-mbstring php7.4-openssl php7.4-pdo php7.4-tokenizer php7.4-xml php7.4-zip php7.4-gd

Configure Nginx for Laravel:
- Create an Nginx server block configuration for your Laravel app (e.g., /etc/nginx/sites-available/laravel_yourapp).
- Configure the Nginx server block to use PHP-FPM for processing PHP files.

Create server block config

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/laravel_yourapp

# NGINX CONFIG FOR LARAVEL [https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/deployment]
server {
   listen 80;
   server_name your_VPS instance_ip;
   root /var/www/laravel_yourapp/public;

   add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
   add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
   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/php7.4-fpm.sock;
       fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
       include fastcgi_params;
   }

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

# From Digital Ocean Snippets [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-ubuntu-18-04]

server {
    listen 80;
    root /var/www/html;
    index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
    server_name your_domain;

    location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
            include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
            fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
    }

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

Enable the Nginx Configuration:

Create a symbolic link to enable the site:

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

Unlink the default conf

sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Test Nginx Configuration:
```
nginx -t
```

Deploy Laravel Application

Clone Your Laravel App from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/laravel_yourapp.git /var/www/laravel_yourapp

Install Composer
- https://getcomposer.org/download/

Install Composer Dependencies

cd /var/www/laravel_yourapp
composer install --no-interaction --prefer-dist

Generate Laravel Application Key:
```
php artisan key:generate
```

Set Permissions:

Ensure proper file permissions for Laravel Application

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/laravel_yourapp
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/laravel_yourapp/storage

Access MySQL:
```
mysql -u root -p
```

Create a database and user:

CREATE DATABASE laravel_yourapp_db;
CREATE USER 'laravel_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON laravel_yourapp_db.* TO 'laravel_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

EXIT MYSQL
```
exit
```
Configure .env
- Update the Database Configuration
```
cd /var/www/laravel_yourapp
nano .env
```
Migrate and Seed Database (Laravel):
```
php artisan migrate --seed
```

Final Steps