Hi there,

From what you’ve described, the slowness issue seems less likely to be your Laravel code and more likely tied to external factors, possibly related to the recent PPA Launchpad updates or network-level changes. Since you’ve tested the site both locally and via the old server’s public IP, and performance is slow in both cases, it points toward something affecting PHP, dependencies, or external services your application relies on.

A few things you could try:

Check PHP extensions and opcache — Make sure the same extensions are enabled on both servers, and that opcache is correctly configured. Database performance — Even if the code hasn’t changed, a remote DB or DNS resolution issue could cause latency. External APIs / PPA packages — If your Laravel app calls external services, those might be slowing down due to recent PPA updates. Testing PHP upgrade — Yes, Laravel 8 doesn’t fully support PHP 8.1+, but you could test on a staging branch to see if PHP 7.4 → 8.0 upgrade improves performance without breaking functionality.

On a lighter note, this reminds me of community mods like Jenny Mod in Minecraft — sometimes adding or updating mods can change game performance unexpectedly. Similarly, a PPA or system-level update can affect your Laravel app even if your code hasn’t changed. The key is isolating whether it’s code, environment, or external services causing the slowdown