htaccess rewrite to /public

This is not recommended practice as you end up with all your app code, config items etc accessible from the outside.

So you are saying that all 25 sites are on the same domain but in different sub folders?

If so, I would have a directory structure like

\var\site1 \var\site2 \var\www\site1 \var\www\site2

in the var\site1 folder you have the Laravel installation with your app

in the var\www\site1 folder have the contents of the site1 public folder. In this folder, change the index.php to bootstrap the correct installation.

no, actually what I would do is have each on a different sub domain, hosted on different servers.

Thanks for your response Snapey!

As we're rewriting example.com/app to example.com/public/app (etc) there is no way that a user will reach the app code files because it will always be looking in the public folder. I like the concept of keeping the app code outside the web directory, but it just won't work for our deployment process and domain structures.

Most of the sites are under separate vhosts, but on one of our domains we have multiple systems in a subfolder e.g. example.com/sys1, example.com/sys2. I can't have it where to access the system someone needs to go to example.com/sys1/public. Similarly because we are using git deployment and we often create new branches and add new systems to the websites, every git repository needs to be in its own folder and not be spread across 2 directories as you proposed.

You can use an alias in Apache to redirect your request to the other folder. Make sure to deny access to that folder directly though.

Right, I've made a bit of progress by printing the request before.

Here's what I'm getting from going to /public

http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/public/test
http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/public
GET
http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/public/test
test
Segments = Array
(
    [0] => test
)

And this is what I'm getting without /public using the rewrite in post 1

URL = http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/test
Root = http://example.local
Method = GET
full URL = http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/test
Path = tests/frameworks/laravel/test
Segments = Array
(
    [0] => tests
    [1] => frameworks
    [2] => laravel
    [3] => test
)

It seems Laravel determines the website root somewhere, but does anyone know what the best way to override it? I have set the url in my app.php to

'url' => 'http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/',

Your help is much appreciated!

What do you want the URL to be?

At the minute, this is just testing, but in this case, the laravel project is at http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/ and I want to be using http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/ as the URL, not http://example.local/tests/frameworks/laravel/public/

Thanks!

hmmm I think you will have a lot of problems with things like asset folder locations, and all your routes will need /tests/frameworks/laravel/ as a prefix

Mm, that was my fear! I will keep digging and experimenting and post back here if I find a solution! Thanks for your suggestions though.