Installing and Configuring Laravel on cPanel and VDS

Laravel Architecture on Shared Hosting

For security, only the public/ folder of a Laravel application should be web-accessible. Core framework files must reside outside public_html.

Directory Structuring

1. Upload Laravel core files to /home/user/laravel_app/.
2. Move the contents of laravel_app/public/ into /home/user/public_html/.
3. Update paths in public_html/index.php:

require __DIR__.'/../laravel_app/vendor/autoload.php';
$app = require_once __DIR__.'/../laravel_app/bootstrap/app.php';

Environment Configuration (.env)

Set APP_ENV=production, APP_DEBUG=false, configure database credentials, and set your production APP_URL.

Creating Storage Symlink

Run via SSH: php artisan storage:link to link public storage to application disk storage.