Laravel 10 Deployment - public folder

Moving the public directory outside of the main Laravel project directory is not a common practice and is not necessary for security if you configure your web server correctly. Laravel is designed to protect your application code by serving requests through the public directory, which acts as the document root. All other directories are not directly accessible via the web server.

However, if you have a specific reason to move the public directory, you can do so by updating your server configuration and Laravel's paths. Here's how you can achieve that:

1. Update your web server configuration to point to the new public directory. For example, if you're using Nginx, you would update the root directive in your site's configuration file:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;
    root /var/www/public;

    index index.php index.html index.htm;

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

    # ... other configurations for PHP, etc.
}

1. In your Laravel application, you need to update the bootstrap/app.php file to set the public path. You've already added the line, but make sure it's correct:

$app->usePublicPath(base_path('../public'));

Make sure the path you provide to base_path() is the correct relative path from your bootstrap directory to the new public directory.

1. After moving the public directory, you should also update the public_path() helper function. You can do this by adding a new method in the AppServiceProvider:

// In app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php

public function register()
{
    $this->app->bind('path.public', function() {
        return base_path('../public');
    });
}

1. If you have assets that use the asset() helper, they should continue to work as long as the public_path() function returns the correct path.

2. You do not need to delete the original public folder inside your project folder, but you should ensure that it is not accessible via the web server. You can rename it or remove it if you're sure that all assets and references have been updated accordingly.

Remember to clear the config cache after making these changes:

php artisan config:clear

And finally, always test your changes in a development or staging environment before deploying to production to ensure that everything works as expected.