Deploying Your Laravel Application on Shared Hosting (The Easier way)

Laravel is one of the best things that happened to PHP, it makes sure that users focus more on business logic of their application rather than how things work deeply behind the scenes. Having worked with Laravel for almost a year starting from version 5.3 I am always tempted to use it for even smaller web applications because it provides every boilerplate needed to start building a web application. Building with Laravel requires the use of command line which is not a problem during development because every system has a terminal by default. The real issue comes up when you are done building your app and ready to deploy.

Two major types of hosting

1. VPS Hosting
2. Shared Hosting

VPS Hosting:

Every user here has his/her own private environment with enough power to make significant changes ranging from installing different operating systems to installing needed dependencies without the need of technical support.

Shared Hosting:

Physical and non physical resources here are shared between users who are making use of the same operating system. Access to shared hosting service is limited and you always have to contact technical support anytime you have technical issues.

Requirements for hosting a Laravel Application on shared hosting

1. Domain name
2. Shared Host
3. Your web Application

For the purpose of this tutorial we will be using a free domain from freenom which will be pointed to our shared host nameservers. Knowledge of shared hosting and app deployment is assumed in this tutorial.

Steps:

1. Point domain name to a shared host nameserver.
2. Create addon domain on cpanel.
3. Copy the whole content of your laravel application to the server.
4. Create database
5. Configuring .env file
6. Set up magic route
7. Run migrations and other artisan commands

Point Domain to nameservers

After acquiring a domain go ahead and point the domain to an already existing shared host nameservers as illustrated in the picture below. 

For more technical details on how to point domain names to servers from different registrars refer to this tutorial.

Create addon domain on cpanel

Next, create addon domain by clicking on Addon Domains on cpanel

Copy the whole content of your laravel application to the server

We can create an ftp if we like to enable us easily copy or transfer our files to the server but for this tutorial we will be using the file manager on the cpanel. To make it easier we zip the whole laravel file and upload the zipped version to the folder that will be created after adding the domain e.g rinz.tk

 

Upload the zipped file by clicking on the upload link while still inside the addon domain folder, select or drop the file to start upload as shown on the image below

Once upload is done, go back to file manager and refresh the page to see the uploaded file, right click on the file and select extract.

Create a database

To create a database click on the database link on the cpanel and enter the name of your database, it usually comes with a prefix so the full name of your database will be a prefix followed by underscore and the name you entered.

Create a user and assign privileges

Next up after creating database is to create a user and then give them access to the already created database as well as grant them the necessary privileges.

Configure .env file

APP_NAME=Laravel
APP_ENV=local
APP_KEY=base64:lqxETOnvR+tr9HRSB6JQlBlvUD8UxgAibBA17/KYUvQ=
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://localhost
LOG_CHANNEL=stack

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=mydatabase_name
DB_USERNAME=mydatabase_username
DB_PASSWORD=mydatabase_userpassword

BROADCAST_DRIVER=log
CACHE_DRIVER=file
SESSION_DRIVER=file
SESSION_LIFETIME=120
QUEUE_DRIVER=sync

REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1
REDIS_PASSWORD=null
REDIS_PORT=6379

MAIL_DRIVER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailtrap.io
MAIL_PORT=2525
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null

PUSHER_APP_ID=
PUSHER_APP_KEY=
PUSHER_APP_SECRET=
PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER=mt1

Create Magic Route 

In your route file i.e web.php located in route folder create a magic route that will enable us run artisan commands from the browser.

 

<?php


use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Request;


Route::get('/artisan', function () {
   //gets the artisan command from query string passed
   $data = Request::get('data');
   //executes the artisan command
   return shell_exec('php ../artisan '.$data);
});

//Alternatively you can use this but it can't execute all commands

Route::get('/artisan', function () {
      //gets the artisan command from query string passed
      $data = Request::get('data');
      return Artisan::call($data);
});


Run Migrations

Once this route is setup we can easily run artisan commands by parsing the commands via query strings. The url will be in the following form http://domain.tld/artisan?data=command e.g http://rinz.tk/artisan?data=migrate  N:B When using unique() keyword on a column whose type is string in your migrations  it is advisable to limit the number of character to something like 100 because laravel doesn't do this by default in users and password reset table. Ensure you change the php version of the server to 7.1 and above.

 Summary

To deploy a laravel application on shared hosting we go through the following processes

• Get a domain free/paid
• Point the domain to shared host nameservers
• Create an addon domain on your cpanel
• Upload the content of your application to the server
• Setup the database and configure the .env
• Setup the magic route
• Run artisan commands

Conclusion

Laravel is just too awesome and shared hosting services should not be a restriction to whomever wants to build an awesome application. This tutorial is a form of hack to get things done and should be your last resort. Always disable the magic route by wiping the block of code off or commenting it out once you are done running the artisan commands and always refer to the official documentation of laravel here for more.