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Build a Website Using the Laravel Framework

Updated Originally authored by Nathaniel Stickman
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Laravel is a PHP web application framework boasting an elegant and expressive syntax. With Laravel, you can easily spin up a new website while also having the features and scalability to handle advanced and large-scale applications.

This guide walks you through the setup process for Laravel, then shows you how to create and deploy your own Laravel website. Distribution-specific installation steps are given for Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS.

Before You Begin

  1. If you have not already done so, create a Linode account and Compute Instance. See our Getting Started with Linode and Creating a Compute Instance guides.

  2. Follow our Setting Up and Securing a Compute Instance guide to update your system. You may also wish to set the timezone, configure your hostname, create a limited user account, and harden SSH access.

Note
This guide is written for non-root user. Commands that require elevated privileges are prefixed with sudo. If you’re not familiar with the sudo command, see the Users and Groups guide.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a web application framework for PHP. It aims to provide an elegant and expressive syntax and a system that grows with you. Laravel makes getting started easy while still being feature-rich for those with PHP and web development experience.

Getting Started with Laravel

Install the Prerequisites

  1. Install PHP and Laravel’s recommended PHP extensions.

    • Debian and Ubuntu:

      sudo apt install php php-bcmath php-common php-curl php-json php-mbstring php-mysql php-xml php-zip php8.1-fpm openssl

    • CentOS 8. Since the package manager’s default repositories only include PHP version 7.2, you need to take the additional step of adding the Remi repository.

      • First, add the Remi repository:

        sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

      • Then, enable PHP 7.4 from the Remi repository and update the package manager.

        sudo dnf module enable php:remi-7.4
sudo dnf update

      • Finally, install the required PHP packages.

        sudo dnf install php php-bcmath php-common php-json php-mbstring php-mysql php-xml php-zip curl openssl

    • openSUSE:

      sudo zypper install php7 php7-bcmath php7-curl php7-fileinfo php7-json php7-mbstring php7-mysql php7-openssl php7-zip php-composer

  2. Change into the directory where you intend to keep your Laravel project’s directory. In this example, you use the current user’s home directory.

    cd ~

  3. Download Composer, ensure that Composer can be used globally, and make it executable.

    curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/composer

Create a Laravel Project

  1. Create your Laravel application.

    composer create-project laravel/laravel example-app

  2. Change into the directory created for the application.

    cd example-app
    Note
    Unless noted otherwise, all subsequent commands in this guide assume you are still in example-app project directory.

  3. Run the PHP development server, Artisan, to verify that the Laravel setup is complete.

    php artisan serve

    Artisan serves the application on localhost:8000. To visit the application remotely, you can use an SSH tunnel:

    • On Windows, you can use the PuTTY tool to set up your SSH tunnel. Follow the appropriate section of the Connecting to a Remote Server Over SSH using PuTTY guide, replacing the example port number there with 8000.

    • On OS X or Linux, use the example command to set up the SSH tunnel. Replace example-user with your username on the application server and 192.0.2.0 with the server’s IP address. Ensure that you can access the server on port 8000 use the sudo ufw allow 8000 to be enable access.

      ssh -L8000:localhost:8000 example-user@192.0.2.0

  4. Now, you can visit the application in your browser by navigating to localhost:8000.

Build a Website with Laravel

This section shows you how to start working with Laravel’s controllers and views to make your own website.

  1. Follow the steps in the Create a Laravel Project section above to get started with a base project.

  2. This example builds a website with a Home page and an About page. Create the routes for each by opening the routes file — ~/example-app/routes/web.php — and add the following contents:

    File: ~/example-app/routes/web.php
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    <?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

use App\Http\Controllers\HomeController;
use App\Http\Controllers\AboutController;

Route::redirect('/', '/home');

Route::get('/home', [HomeController::class, 'index']);

Route::get('/about', [AboutController::class, 'index']);

    First, this imports the controllers—HomeController and AboutController that get created in the next two steps. Then, it routes requests to the /home and /about URLs to their respective controllers. It also includes a route to redirect traffic from the base URL (/) to the /home URL.

  3. Create the Home controller by creating an ~/example-app/app/Http/Controllers/HomeController.php file and giving it the contents shown below:

    File: ~/example-app/app/Http/Controllers/HomeController.php
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    <?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;

class HomeController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return view('home', ['title' => 'Home Page']);
    }
}

    This controller simply renders the Home page view and feeds a title parameter into it.

  4. Do the same for the About controller. In this case, the new file is ~/example-app/app/Http/Controllers/AboutController.php. This controller serves the same function as the Home controller, however, it renders the about page view instead.

    File: ~/example-app/app/Http/Controllers/AboutController.php
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    <?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;

class AboutController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return view('about', ['title' => 'About Page']);
    }
}

  5. This example’s views share a navigation menu, so the website can use a layout template to reduce duplicate code. Create the layout template as ~/example-app/resources/views/layouts/master.blade.php, and give it the contents shown in the example below.

    Note

    Before creating your layout template, you need to create the layouts subdirectory.

    mkdir ~/example-app/resources/views/layouts
    File: ~/example-app/resources/views/layouts/master.blade.php
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    <html>
    <head>
        @if ($title)
                <title>{{ $title }}</title>
        @else
                <title>Example Laravel App</title>
        @endif
    </head>
    <body>
        <div><a href="/home">Home</a> | <a href="/about">About</a>
        <hr/>
        <div class="container">
            @yield('content')
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

  6. Now, to create the views themselves. Create a ~/example-app/resources/views/home.blade.php file and a ~/example-app/resources/views/about.blade.php file. Add the contents of the example files below:

    File: ~/example-app/resources/views/home.blade.php
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    @extends('layouts.master')

@section('content')
        <h1>{{ $title }}</h1>
        <p>This is the home page for an example Laravel web application.</p>
@endsection
    File: ~/example-app/resources/views/about.blade.php
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    @extends('layouts.master')

@section('content')
        <h1>{{ $title }}</h1>
        <p>This is the about page for an example Laravel web application.</p>
@endsection

    Each of these view templates first declares that it extends the master layout template. This lets each work within the layout, reducing the amount of code you have to rewrite and making sure the pages are consistent. Each view defines its main contents as being part of the content section, which was defined in the master layout.

  7. Run the application using the steps given at the end of the Create a Laravel Project section above.

    You can now visit the website on localhost:8000.

    Laravel website example

Deploy a Laravel Web Application

While the Artisan server works well for development, it is recommended that you use a more robust server for production deployment. In this section, you can see how to do just that, deploying your Laravel web application using NGINX.

These steps assume your application has the same location and name as given in the previous sections.

  1. Install NGINX and php-fpm.

    • On Debian and Ubuntu, use:

      sudo apt install nginx php7.4-fpm

    • On CentOS, use:

      sudo yum install nginx php-fpm

    • On openSUSE, use:

      sudo zypper install nginx php-fpm

  2. Copy your Laravel project directory to /var/www.

    sudo cp -R ~/example-app /var/www

  3. Give the www-data user ownership of the project’s storage subdirectory.

    sudo chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/example-app/storage

  4. Create an NGINX configuration file for the website, and add the contents shown below. Replace example.com with your server’s domain name.

    File: /etc/nginx/sites-available/example-app
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    server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;
    root /var/www/example-app/public;

    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    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;
    }
}

  5. Create a symbolic link of the configuration file in the NGINX sites-enabled directory. You can also remove the default site configuration from this directory.

    sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example-app /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

  6. Verify the NGINX configuration.

    sudo nginx -t

  7. Enable and start the NGINX service.

    sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo systemctl start nginx

  8. Similarly, enable and start the PHP-FPM service, which NGINX uses to run your application.

    • On Debian and Ubuntu, use:

      sudo systemctl enable php7.4-fpm
sudo systemctl start php7.4-fpm

    • On CentOS, use:

      sudo systemctl enable php-fpm
sudo systemctl start php-fpm

  9. Your application should now be running — visit it by navigating to your server’s domain name in your browser. Make sure you prefix your domain name with http rather than https, as the server has not been set up with an SSL certificate.

Conclusion

You now have your own Laravel website up and running! To build on what you created by following this guide, be sure to take a look through Laravel’s documentation. There, you can find plenty of information to dive deeper into the components of a Laravel application.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

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laravel debian ubuntu centos php

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