Installing Laravel on Ubuntu 18.04

Laravel is a free, open-source PHP web framework used for building web applications. It provides an elegant syntax and a set of useful tools to make development tasks easier. To install Laravel on Ubuntu 18.04, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Update the System

It's always a good idea to start by updating the system packages. Open the terminal and run the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2: Install PHP

Laravel requires PHP to be installed on the system. Install PHP and other necessary extensions using the following command:

sudo apt install php php-cli php-fpm php-mbstring php-xml php-zip php-mysql php-gd php-curl

Step 3: Install Composer

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Laravel uses Composer to manage its dependencies. Install Composer globally by running the following commands:

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

Step 4: Create a Laravel Project

Now that you have Laravel's prerequisites installed, you can create a new Laravel project. Navigate to the directory where you want to create the project and run the following command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel project-name

Step 5: Configure Permissions

Change the ownership of the Laravel project directory to the web server's user:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data project-name

Step 6: Configure Virtual Host (Optional)

If you want to access your Laravel project through a domain name instead of an IP address, you can configure a virtual host. Create a new virtual host configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/project-name.conf

Inside the file, add the following configuration:

     ServerName example.com
     ServerAlias www.example.com
     DocumentRoot /path/to/project-name/public
     
         AllowOverride All
         Require all granted
     
 

Save the file and enable the virtual host:

sudo a2ensite project-name.conf
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Now you should be able to access your Laravel application using the configured domain name.

That's it! You have successfully installed Laravel on Ubuntu 18.04.