Laravel Deployment: From Local to Production 2026

> Key Takeaway: Laravel deployment covers the path from local development to production infrastructure: server setup (Nginx/Apache, PHP-FPM), database migration, environment variable configuration, SSL certificates, and automated deployments via CI/CD pipeline. Tools like Laravel Forge or Envoyer significantly simplify the process.

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[Laravel](/services/software development) Deployment: From local to production (2026)

Published: June 2026 | Reading time: about 15 minutes Category: DevOps

Deployment of a Laravel application can initially be intimidating, but with the right knowledge and tools it is a structured process. In this guide we will guide you through all steps to bring your Laravel application safely and efficiently into production.

Hosting Options for Laravel

Option Description Recommended for

Laravel Forge Managed Server Provisioning by Laravel Professional projects

**Laravel Vapor * * Serverless Deployment on AWS Scalable applications

**Shared Hosting * * Cheap hosting with SSH access Small projects, budgets

**VPS/Cloud * * DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS EC2 Full control

Server Requirements

• PHP > = 8.2 with necessary extensions

• Composer

• Web server (Nginx or Apache)

• Database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite)

• Node.js & NPM (for frontend sets)

Step-by-step deployment

1. Prepare application for production

Configure .env for production APP ENV=production APP DEBUG=false APP URL=https://ihre-domain.de

Generate Secure App Key php artisan key:generate

2. Transfer files to the server

With Git (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/ihr-repo/projekt.git /var/www/project cd /var/www.project git checkout main

Or with rsync

rsync -avz --exclude='.git' --exclude='node modules' . ./project/user@server:/var/www/project/

3. Install dependencies

Composer dependencies (without dev packages)

composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev

Build NPM liabilities and assets

npm install npm run build

4. Optimizations for production

Configuration caching

php artisan config:cache

Routes caching

php artisan route:cache

Views caching

php artisan view:cache

Optimize Autoloader (ready in composer install)

composer dump-autoload --optimize

5. migrate database

php artisan migrate --force

6. Set permissions

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/project sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/project sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/project/storage sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/project/bootstrap/cache

Nginx configuration

server list 80; server name their-domain.de; root /var/www/project/public;

add header X-frame options "SAMEORIGIN"; add header X-Content Type Options "nosniff";

index

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/php8.2-fpm.sock; fastcgi param SCRIPT FILENAME $realpath root$fastcgi script name; include fastcgi params; }

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

**Important:**Forget