Complete VPS Setup Guide for Laravel on Ubuntu (Apache + MySQL + PHP)

Setting up a fresh VPS for Laravel takes most developers three to five hours the first time. With the right sequence, you can cut that down to under 60 minutes. I’ve deployed 10+ Laravel applications on DigitalOcean and Hetzner using this exact stack, and this VPS setup guide covers every step I follow from a blank Ubuntu server to a fully running Laravel app with SSL, queues, and a locked-down firewall.

This guide targets Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The steps work on any VPS provider: DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr, Linode, or AWS Lightsail.

Key Takeaways

Prerequisites: What You Need Before You Start

Before running a single command, confirm you have these four things ready. Skipping any one of them will cause you to stop mid-guide and lose your place.

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or 24.04 LTS installed on your VPS. Both versions are supported. Ubuntu 20.04 reaches end-of-life in April 2025, so avoid it for new projects.
• At least 1GB RAM, ideally 2GB. Composer install alone can exhaust memory on a 512MB server during dependency resolution.
• Root or sudo SSH access. You need to install system packages and configure the firewall.
• A domain name pointed to your VPS IP address. Certbot needs DNS to resolve before it can issue a certificate. Point your A record first, then wait for propagation before running SSL steps.

Step 1: How Do You Prepare a Fresh Ubuntu Server?

A fresh VPS ships with outdated packages and only a root account. Your first job is to update the system and create a non-root user. Running everything as root is dangerous: one typo in a destructive command has no safety net. Ubuntu’s official server hardening guide recommends creating a sudo user as the very first step on any new server.

ssh root@your-server-ip
apt update && apt upgrade -y
adduser deployuser
usermod -aG sudo deployuser
rsync --archive --chown=deployuser:deployuser ~/.ssh /home/deployuser

Now log out and reconnect as your new user. Run sudo whoami to confirm sudo privileges are working. If it returns root, you’re good to continue.

Step 2: How Do You Install and Configure Apache on Ubuntu?

Apache is the web server that receives HTTP requests and passes them to PHP. According to Netcraft’s web server survey, Apache powers roughly 31% of all active websites. For a Laravel VPS, you need Apache with three specific modules enabled: rewrite for URL routing, headers for security headers, and ssl for HTTPS.

sudo apt install apache2 -y
sudo a2enmod rewrite headers ssl
sudo systemctl enable apache2
sudo systemctl start apache2

The rewrite module is non-negotiable for Laravel. Without it, Laravel’s URL routing breaks entirely and every route except the homepage returns a 404. Create a VirtualHost configuration for your Laravel application:

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

    ServerName yourdomain.com
    ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/laravel/public

    
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/laravel_error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/laravel_access.log combined

The DocumentRoot points to Laravel’s public folder, not the project root. Exposing the project root would make your .env file publicly accessible.

sudo a2ensite laravel.conf
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo systemctl reload apache2

Step 3: How Do You Install and Secure MySQL for Laravel?

MySQL is Laravel’s default database driver. A fresh MySQL install leaves several insecure defaults in place: anonymous users, test databases accessible to anyone, and remote root login. The mysql_secure_installation script fixes all of these in one pass. According to Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, misconfigured databases remain one of the top three causes of application breaches.

sudo apt install mysql-server -y
sudo mysql_secure_installation

Now create a dedicated database and user for your Laravel app. Never use the root MySQL user in your Laravel .env file:

sudo mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE laravel_db CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'laravel_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YourStrongPassword123!';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON laravel_db.* TO 'laravel_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

The utf8mb4 charset is important. Laravel uses it as the default, and it supports the full Unicode range including emoji. Using utf8 instead truncates characters silently.

Step 4: How Do You Install PHP and the Required Laravel Extensions?

Laravel 11 requires PHP 8.2 or higher. The core PHP package alone isn’t enough: Laravel needs specific extensions for database access, caching, image processing, and cryptography. Missing even one extension causes a cryptic startup error. The official Laravel deployment documentation lists the full extension requirements for each version.

sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-xml php-mbstring php-curl php-zip php-bcmath php-tokenizer php-json php-gd php-intl php-cli -y

Now adjust php.ini for production workloads. The defaults are too conservative for Laravel apps that handle file uploads or run longer background processes:

sudo nano /etc/php/8.*/apache2/php.ini

memory_limit = 512M
max_execution_time = 300
upload_max_filesize = 64M
post_max_size = 64M

The default memory_limit of 128M causes Composer and some Laravel jobs to fail with out-of-memory errors. Setting it to 512M gives you comfortable headroom.

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 5: How Do You Deploy a Laravel Application to the VPS?

Deploying Laravel involves more than copying files. You need to install dependencies, generate an application key, configure environment variables, run migrations, and set correct file permissions. In my experience across 10+ Laravel VPS deployments, storage permission errors on the storage folder cause about 70% of all first-deploy failures.

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/laravel
sudo chown deployuser:deployuser /var/www/laravel
cd /var/www
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/your-laravel-app.git laravel
cd /var/www/laravel
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

Open .env and set your database credentials. Set APP_DEBUG=false in production. Leaving it true exposes stack traces and file paths to anyone who triggers an error.

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=laravel_db
DB_USERNAME=laravel_user
DB_PASSWORD=YourStrongPassword123!

php artisan migrate --force
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/laravel/storage
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/laravel/bootstrap/cache
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/laravel/storage
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/laravel/bootstrap/cache
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache

Step 6: How Do You Add Free SSL with Let’s Encrypt?

Let’s Encrypt issues free SSL certificates trusted by all major browsers. As of 2024, Let’s Encrypt had issued over 3 billion certificates, according to the Let’s Encrypt certificate statistics page. Certbot automates both the initial issuance and the renewal process, so you never have to manually renew a certificate.

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y
sudo certbot --apache -d yourdomain.com -d www.yourdomain.com
sudo certbot renew --dry-run

If you’re using Cloudflare in front of your server, set the SSL/TLS mode to Full (Strict) in the Cloudflare dashboard. Using “Flexible” mode with a real certificate causes redirect loops.

Step 7: How Do You Keep Laravel Queue Workers Running with Supervisor?

Laravel’s queue workers process background jobs: sending emails, resizing images, syncing data with third-party APIs. A plain php artisan queue:work command stops the moment you close your SSH session. Supervisor is a process control system that keeps workers running permanently and restarts them automatically if they crash. The Supervisor documentation explains its process monitoring model in detail.

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

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

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

Run sudo supervisorctl status to verify workers are running. If you see FATAL, check /var/www/laravel/storage/logs/worker.log for the error.

Step 8: How Do You Secure the VPS Firewall?

A public-facing server with no firewall accepts connections on every port. UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) is Ubuntu’s default firewall tool. Fail2ban adds brute-force protection by banning IPs that fail authentication too many times.

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 'Apache Full'
sudo ufw enable
sudo apt install fail2ban -y
sudo systemctl enable fail2ban
sudo systemctl start fail2ban

Never enable the firewall before allowing SSH or you’ll lock yourself out of the server.

Quick Reference: Service Status Commands

Component	Status Command	Expected Output
Apache	sudo systemctl status apache2	active (running)
MySQL	sudo systemctl status mysql	active (running)
PHP	php -v	PHP 8.2.x or higher
Supervisor	sudo supervisorctl status	laravel-worker RUNNING
UFW Firewall	sudo ufw status verbose	Status: active
Fail2ban	sudo fail2ban-client status sshd	Currently banned: 0
SSL Certificate	sudo certbot certificates	Expiry date shown
Laravel App	php artisan about	Environment: production

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

Laravel 500 Error After Deployment

Check storage/logs/laravel.log first. If you see “The stream or file could not be opened” it’s a permissions issue:

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

“Too Many Redirects” with Cloudflare

This happens when Cloudflare is set to “Flexible” SSL but your server also redirects HTTP to HTTPS. Set Cloudflare SSL mode to “Full (Strict)”. Also add this to your .env:

FORCE_HTTPS=true

Supervisor Workers Not Restarting After Code Deployment

Queue workers cache your application code in memory. Always restart workers after every deployment:

sudo supervisorctl restart laravel-worker:*

Also Read: How to Fix Elasticsearch Red Cluster Status in 3 Steps

FAQs

Useful Resources:

• Laravel 11 Deployment Documentation
• Ubuntu Server Guide
• Certbot Instructions for Apache on Ubuntu
• Supervisor Configuration Reference