Laravel + React Deployment on Hetzner or Hostinger etc.

Level 58

Certainly! Here’s a step-by-step guide to deploying a Laravel + React application on a typical VPS (like Hetzner or Hostinger). This assumes you have root or sudo access to your server.

1. Prepare Your Server

Install Required Software:

PHP (Laravel requirement)
Composer
Node.js & npm (React and Laravel Mix)
Nginx or Apache
MySQL/PostgreSQL (if needed)
Git

Example for Ubuntu (adjust versions as needed):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx php php-fpm php-mysql php-xml php-mbstring php-curl php-zip unzip git curl
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

2. Upload Your Code

You can use git clone or SFTP to upload your project:

cd /var/www
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/your-laravel-react-app.git
cd your-laravel-react-app

3. Install Dependencies

Backend (Laravel):

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

Edit .env for your production database and settings.

Frontend (React): If your React app is inside resources/js (using Laravel Mix):

npm install
npm run build

If it's a separate React app (e.g., in /frontend), build it and copy the static files to Laravel's public directory.

4. Set Permissions

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

5. Configure Web Server

Nginx Example:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yourdomain.com;
    root /var/www/your-laravel-react-app/public;

    index index.php index.html;

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

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Reload Nginx:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

6. Set Up Environment

Set up your database and update .env.
Run migrations:
```
php artisan migrate --force
```
Set up queues, cache, etc. as needed.

7. SSL (Optional but recommended)

Use Let's Encrypt for free SSL:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx

8. Final Steps

Test your app in the browser.
Set up supervisor for queues if needed.

Set up cron for Laravel scheduler:

* * * * * cd /var/www/your-laravel-react-app && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

References:

If you need a more specific guide for your setup (e.g., React as SPA in /frontend), let me know!