Laravel Requirements on a VPS

Laravel 11.x requires PHP 8.2+ and the extensions BCMath, Ctype, cURL, DOM, Fileinfo, JSON, Mbstring, OpenSSL, PCRE, PDO, Tokenizer, XML. You also need Composer, Node.js (for npm) and a database (MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL).

Installing Dependencies

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y php8.2-fpm php8.2-cli php8.2-mysql \
    php8.2-mbstring php8.2-xml php8.2-curl php8.2-zip php8.2-bcmath \
    php8.2-intl php8.2-redis nginx mysql-server git unzip

# Composer
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Installing Laravel

cd /var/www
composer create-project laravel/laravel myapp
cd myapp
chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache
chown -R www-data:www-data .

Configuring .env

cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

nano .env

APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://yourdomain.com

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=myapp_db
DB_USERNAME=myapp_user
DB_PASSWORD=StrongPassword123

Nginx vhost for Laravel

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yourdomain.com;
    root /var/www/myapp/public;
    index index.php;

    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

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

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

Migrations and Build

php artisan migrate --force
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache
npm install && npm run build

Supervisor for Laravel Queues

sudo apt install supervisor
sudo nano /etc/supervisor/conf.d/laravel-worker.conf

[program:laravel-worker]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /var/www/myapp/artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
numprocs=2
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/log/laravel-worker.log

sudo supervisorctl reread
sudo supervisorctl update
sudo supervisorctl start laravel-worker:*

Cron for the Laravel Scheduler

sudo crontab -u www-data -e
# Add:
* * * * * cd /var/www/myapp && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Production optimization: Run php artisan optimize after every deploy — it caches the config, routes and views, which speeds up responses by 30–50%.

Real Errors After Deploying Laravel

419 Page Expired

Happens when the CSRF token falls out of sync with the session: most often because of a wrong SESSION_DOMAIN in .env behind a reverse proxy, or because APP_KEY was never generated after copying the project to a new server.

Cannot open storage/logs/laravel.log

The stream or file "/var/www/myapp/storage/logs/laravel.log" could not be opened in append mode: Failed to open stream: Permission denied

PHP-FPM runs as www-data, while the storage folder is often left after a deploy with the permissions of whichever user ran git pull or composer install. Permissions need to be set after every code update, not just once during the initial install.

A blank white screen instead of a page

With APP_DEBUG=false, Laravel shows visitors a generic "500 | Server Error" page with zero technical detail — correct behavior for production, but the real cause needs to be found not on screen but in storage/logs/laravel.log.

When This Setup Does Not Fit

The default file drivers for sessions and cache store data on a single server's disk — scaling to several instances behind a load balancer requires Redis or a database as shared storage.
numprocs=2 in Supervisor is sized for a light queue — for heavy jobs (mass mailings, report generation), two workers quickly become too few, and the queue starts backing up with no warning in the logs.
Running php artisan queue:work directly, without Supervisor, kills every job currently being processed on each deploy — Supervisor with stopwaitsecs gives the worker time to finish its current job cleanly.

Verifying the Result

# The application's configuration and environment read correctly
php artisan about

# The queue workers are actually running
sudo supervisorctl status

# A live tail of the application log during a test request
tail -f storage/logs/laravel.log

php artisan about shows the PHP version, the environment, and the cache status for config and routes all in one table — faster than gathering the same information by hand from a dozen files. For queues on top of Redis, see the dedicated article on session and cache driver setup.