Setting up a Laravel 4 app on a VPS

Question

I am trying to deploy my first Laravel App. So I hope I am providing all the necessary info. I have walked down several paths trying to deploy this app. I tried a shared hosting account, but found too many errors to continue deploying my Laravel app. In the meantime, someone has said to me I need a VPS, so I may go with that.

So with a new VPS, I now am trying to install the following: phpMyAdmin, node.js, Composer, and Laravel 4. These are the technologies I am using on my local server with MAMP. Now after being overwhelmed with the information on installing each on a VPS, I have found myself extremely confused. Some places say I need to install Ubuntu. Some say I need to install Apache first. Some talk about using CentOS. I honestly have no idea what I need to install, and in what order. All I really need is to figure out how to set up a PHP environment on my VPS with phpMyAdmin, Node.js, and Composer. After that I am pretty sure it's all straight forward, as far as installing my app.

I also saw some one talking about committing my app to Git, and the cloning it to the VPS. If I did this, I would still need to set up the environment correct? Once again, I hope I have provided the necessary information. If my question is not clear, could you please refer me to a resource that I can study.

Answer 1

You don't need install Laravel separately from the app it is part of - these days a PHP app just contains everything it needs in its vendor folder. How to deploy depends on how you have arranged your dependencies locally, but the simplest way is to copy everything in your local project to your remote server (FTP or rsync). I don't think Laravel demands a VPS, but if you are using Node as well, then yes you will.

So, the short answer is: if it works locally, copy it up to the remote host, and it should work there. Make sure you've set up your config system in your app so that it can cope with the different settings you need in local/remote environments, such as database connection settings.

My feeling is that a shared host would be easier for you as a beginner - is the Node.js component of your app critical? Running your own VPS is not difficult, but there is quite a bit to learn. Your distro (such as Ubuntu) would be ready-installed, and on top of that you would use the package system (something like apt-get) to install Apache, PHP, PHP modules, phpMyAdmin, git, and whatever else you need.

Yes, you can certainly deploy using Git. One way to do this is to create bare repositories on your server in a private place, set it up as a remote in your local dev machine, and push to it as your off-site copy. Then, from your dev or production web folders, pull and update submodules. This is not trivial, and requires at least a working knowledge of Git - so presently I wouldn't recommend this route.