Be part of JetBrains PHPverse 2026 on June 9 – a free online event bringing PHP devs worldwide together.

Browse all series

Learn Laravel Forge

In this series, long-time Laravel Forge advocate Matt Stauffer will teach you how to become a Forge power user. Of course, you'll learn how to provision servers in seconds, but you'll also learn about zero-downtime deployments, processes, queues, securing sites with SSL, database backups, networks, and more!

Each episode is bite-sized, so feel free to jump around to the topic that interests you most. Let's go!

Progress

Series Info

Episodes
23
Run Time
1h 58m
Difficulty
Intermediate
Last Updated
Nov 25, 2025
Version
Latest
Play Series

Series Episodes

  1. Episodes (23)

    1. What is Laravel Forge?

      What is Laravel Forge, and why would someone choose to use it?

    2. How Deploys Work in Laravel

      Before we cover deploying your apps in Forge, let's first discuss very basics of deploying modern Laravel applications.

    3. Creating a Server with Laravel VPS

      The simplest way to create a server in Forge is to use Forge's provided "Laravel VPS" server provider, so we'll create a server using Laravel VPS.

    4. Creating a Server with Standard VPS Providers

      The classic way to create servers in Forge is to authenticate with a server provider and then use Forge to create servers through them. In this video, we'll authenticate Forge with Digital Ocean and create a new server in DO through Forge.

    5. SSH (and SSH keys)

      In order to connect to our Forge-created servers, we need to authenticate who we are. Rather than using username and password, we'll use SSH keys, which we can attach to our Forge account and/or servers.

    6. Creating a Site

      The core piece of connecting Forge to an application is a "site", a repository of code hosted at one or more domains. Let's create our first site!

    7. Deployments and Commands

      When you first add a site to Forge, it "deploys" it for you. But how do you make that happen again? What exactly happens when it deploys, and how can you customize it?

    8. Zero Downtime Deploys in Forge

      Forge's default deployment is now zero-downtime, but they work a bit differently than you may be used to.

    9. Domains and SSL

      Forge makes it easy to point your own domains and secure them, and Forge 2.0 adds new free on-forge.com domains for every site.

    10. Environment Settings

      Environment files are key components to how we build, secure, and differentiate Laravel apps. Forge has special knowledge of how to interact with a Laravel app's environment file.

    11. Creating and Working with Databases

      Forge makes it easy to create and manage databases like MYSQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and Redis.

    12. Scheduled Jobs & Heartbeats

      The best way to trigger recurring actions on an app is Forge's scheduled jobs, and the best way to ensure scheduled jobs are completing is Forge's Heartbeats.

    13. Background Processes & Queue Workers

      If your application uses queues, or has any other reason to need a long-running process on your server, Forge's Queue Workers and Custom Processes make it easy to configure Supervisor to start and monitor your background processes.

    14. Monitoring Server Health

      Forge spins up sites and servers for us, but it's still our responsibility to make sure they're working correctly. Thankfully, Forge provides some features to ensure our servers and sites are still functioning.

    15. Teams, Roles, & Resource Sharing

      Teams and Roles enable us to share servers, sites, recipes, and server providers with members of our teams.

    16. The Command Palette

      As developers, we love keyboard shortcuts, but even more than that, we love a good IDE command palette. Forge's command palette is much more powerful than just search, so let's dig into what you can do with it.

    17. Configuring PHP

      If you need to customize your PHP install, or install other versions of PHP on the same server, Forge makes that easy.

    18. Billing, Organization, and other Settings

      In this episode we'll look into Forge's billing and usage, and how to organize your account, servers, sites, and teams.

    19. Recipes

      If you have any scripts you'd like to run regularly, or on more than one server at once, or at the server level instead of the site level, recipes have you covered.

    20. Database Backups

      Forge makes it possible to automate backing up your databases to an S3-compatible storage service.

    21. Authenticating Composer Dependencies

      If you're installing private Composer packages, Forge simplfies the process of providing Composer credentials to your sites.

    22. Networks, Firewalls, and Load Balancing

      Most of the time we're just dealing with one Forge server. But if you want to configure how your servers talk to each other, or to the outside world, take a look at Forge's multitude of network configuration options.

    23. Nginx Templates

      If you find yourself manually editing your Nginx configurations the same way over and over, check out Nginx templates.

Continue Learning

Vue State Management thumbnail

Vue State Management

With Sabatino Masala

State management is at the heart of every Vue application, but exactly how you manage that state can sometimes be...confusing. So let's explore your options! We'll start with the basics, like props and events, before moving on to provide/inject, custom composables, and Pinia. Along the way, we'll tackle practical, real-world scenarios. By the end, you'll know exactly which approach to use and when, so your apps stay clean, organized, and fun to work on.

  • 13 Episodes
Running Clock thumbnail

Running Clock

With Simon Vrachliotis

Welcome to "Running Clock," my new interview series where I fire off questions to top developers about their favorite tools, frameworks, and coding obsessions. The catch? We only have five minutes to get through all of my questions...and the clock is ticking!

  • 11 Episodes
Supercharged Search with Typesense thumbnail

Supercharged Search with Typesense

With Jeffrey Way

Typesense is a wildly fast, open-source search engine that doesn't require a PhD to configure and query. Its API just makes sense. Even better, it integrates seamlessly with Laravel, thanks to the official Typesense PHP client and Laravel Scout.I spent months researching and preparing this course so that you can update your app with powerful Typesense-backed search in record time. Let's go!

  • 22 Episodes
Programming Terms Explained thumbnail

Programming Terms Explained

With Jeremy McPeak

In this series, we'll do things just a little bit differently. Let's take a step back from our code editors and instead review some fundamental technology and software development terms. I'm willing to bet that there are certain bedrock terms that you somehow accidentally skipped over and never learned properly.Let's fix that! Each episode below will focus on a single topic, condensed to the essentials, and animated to perfection for your enjoyment.

  • 12 Episodes
Get Real With Laravel Reverb thumbnail

Get Real With Laravel Reverb

With Joe Dixon

Hi, I'm Joe, the creator of Laravel Reverb. In this course, I'll walk you through everything you need to know to start using real-time WebSocket communication in your Laravel applications. Join me as we cover everything from installation to deployment and monitoring on our journey getting real with Laravel Reverb! Let's go!

  • 10 Episodes