Laravel configuration with LAMP stack.

This guide will also cover Laravel pretty URLs with UBUNTU 18.04. This guide is heavily inspired from this guide

Step 1 — Installing Apache and Updating the Firewall

Install Apache using Ubuntu's package manager, apt:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2

Adjust the Firewall to Allow Web Traffic

sudo ufw app list

Output

Available applications:
  Apache
  Apache Full
  Apache Secure
  OpenSSH

If you look at the Apache Full profile, it should show that it enables traffic to ports 80 and 443: sudo ufw app info "Apache Full"

Output
Profile: Apache Full
Title: Web Server (HTTP,HTTPS)
Description: Apache v2 is the next generation of the omnipresent Apache web
server.

Ports:
  80,443/tcp

Allow incoming HTTP and HTTPS traffic for this profile:

sudo ufw allow in "Apache Full"

Now

http://your_server_ip

will serve you Apache default page.

Step 2 — Installing MySQL

sudo apt install mysql-server

Setup password for root user.

sudo mysql
mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'secure_password';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> exit;

For secure MySQL installation, please check this guide

Step 3 — Installing PHP

In original guide, required Modules for Laravel are missing. Guide contains something like this.

sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql

instead, we're going to install PHP 7.2 with all the Modules that Laravel requires.

sudo apt install php7.2 libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-soap php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-cli php7.2-zip php-mysql php-curl

In most cases, you will want to modify the way that Apache serves files when a directory is requested. Currently, if a user requests a directory from the server, Apache will first look for a file called index.html. We want to tell the web server to prefer PHP files over others, so make Apache look for an index.php file first.

To do this, type this command to open the dir.conf file in a text editor with root privileges:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dir.conf

<IfModule mod_dir.c>
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.cgi index.pl index.php index.xhtml index.htm
</IfModule>

move index.php after DirectoryIndex

<IfModule mod_dir.c>
    DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.cgi index.pl index.xhtml index.htm
</IfModule>

Restart the Apache web server.

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 4: Install Composer to Download Laravel

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

cd /var/www/html

sudo composer create-project laravel/laravel MyProject --prefer-dist

Change Permissions

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/MyProject/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/MyProject/

Step 5: Configure Apache

You can choose whatever name you want for this file, I am going to stick with laravel.conf

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/laravel.conf

Add following content to file.

<VirtualHost *:80>   
  ServerAdmin admin@example.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/html/MyProject/public
     ServerName example.com

     <Directory /var/www/html/MyProject/public>
        Options +FollowSymlinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
     </Directory>

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Save the file and exit(hit esc then type :wq and hit Enter).

Step 6: Enable the Laravel and Rewrite Module

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo a2ensite laravel.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo service apache2 restart

Step 7: Restart Apache

sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

and you're all set to go.

Head to http://example.com and you'll see Laravel homepage.