Laravel on shared hosting or free hosting ! Preparations necessary for deployment with Laravel Deployer

NECESSARY PREPARATIONS

1- Create seed files

If your application does not need data saved in your local database when it is online, you can skip creating seed files.

In case your application needs the data saved in your local database, you must create seed files. If you don't know it yet, these seed files will automatically populate the online database. This will save us from importing or entering data manually. The tool to use is orangehill/iseed. The documentation is here : https://github.com/orangehill/iseed . Here is an example of a seed file created from a table named "videos":

seed file example laravel deployer for shared and free hosting

2- Delete folder or link named "storage" in the "public" folder of your application

If you have not run the php artisan "storage:link" command in your application before and you have not created a folder named "storage" in the public folder, you can go to the next step.

In case you have already run the php artisan "storage:link" command in your application, the storage link is present in the public folder. Please delete it. Or if for some reason you have put a folder named storage in the public folder, please rename it to avoid collisions during deployment.

delete storage link laravel deployer for shared and free hosting

3- Move the ".env" file from your application

The ".env" file of your application should not be sent to your server! Laravel Deployer will create a new one for you. You can edit the new ".env" file online after deployment.

remove env file laravel deployer for shared and free hosting

4- Download Laravel Deployer

Download

After downloading, unzip it and you will have a "laravel-deployer" folder.

5- Upload your application folder and the laravel-deployer folder to your server

Upload your application folder and the laravel-deployer folder to your server's public folder. Usually it's "public_html" or "www" . Some free hosts use other names. It's up to you to check. You should have like the photo below using your online file manager:

file manager laravel deployer for shared and free hosting

Your public folder should not contain a ".htaccess" file. If there is one, delete it. On some hosts, this kind of file is hidden so please check.

6- Create an online database and email address

In your shared or free hosting control panel, create a mysql database and a user associated with the database. The information you should have after creating the database is:

MySQL host (usually localhost)
Mysql port (usually 3306)
The database name
The username associated with the database
The password

Also create an email address for your website. The SMTP information you should remember is as follows:

SMTP host
SMTP port
SMTP user (Usually the email address)
SMTP password (The email address password)
Email encryption : ssl or tls

You will need the information listed above during deployment.

7- Start the deployment

Open the link www.your-domain.com/laravel-deployer/ in your browser and read How to deploy?