Deploying Laravel App To Shared Hosting (Namecheap) Using Laravel Deployer And Github

Adinnu Benedict — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 02:34:25 +0000

There are lot of tutorials and guides out there that treats this same topic but you will run into issues very quickly while trying to follow them.

Recently, I was stuck on a project that I must use the shared hosting provided by my client because of low App development budget.

Most of the guide I found involved

Editing the index.php before upload
Editing code on production or replacing files after each change
No git management or Version control
No real deployment
Had lots of security issues

So I take it on myself to hack through the process of deploying a Laravel app on Shared hosting server while avoiding the problems listed above and I found out it was easier than I thought.

Tools

A Working Laravel App On Github
Laravel Deployer Package.
Namecheap Shared Hosting

Let's Get To Work

First we have to setup our hosting cPanel to help deploy easily

Login to your Namecheap cPanel Account.
Navigate to Manage Shell and Enable SSH access. Note the Access Details Displayed
Navigate to Select PHP Version and make sure apcu is enabled
Optionally, You can create a database if needed

Next, let's setup up our project for deployment

Install Laravel deployer Package by running on the CLI
```
composer require lorisleiva/laravel-deployer
```
Next, we must generate our deployer config file by running. This config file will tell deployer about our Project, Server and Deployment method.
```
php artisan deploy:init
```
Respond to the CLI Question while replacing
- Repository URL with your project url on Github
- Hostname of your deployment server with your domain name
- Deployment path (absolute to the server) with /home/your-cPanel-username/source

On the root directory of the project, create a file called deployer_task.php and paste the following code inside of it.

<?php
namespace Deployer;
desc('Symlink Laravel public To public_html');
task('app:symlink_public_html', function () {
run('ln -s /home/{{your-cpanel-username}}/source/current/public /home/{{your-cpanel-username}}/public_html');
});

Open config/deploy.php, scroll till you find the hosts config and in the section that defines your domain, add or update the follow keys

'deploy_path' => '/home/{{your-cpanel-username}}/source',
'user' => {{your-cpanel-username}},
'strategy' => 'firstdeploy',
'port' => 21098, // Port provided by cPanel ssh
'http_user' => {{your-cpanel-username}},
'writable_mode' => 'chmod'

Scroll to the include section add the deployer_task.php we created like this


    'include' => [
        base_path('deployer_task.php')
    ],

Scroll again in deployer_task.php file in the hooks section add app:symlink_public_html in done section like this

    'hooks' => [
        .....

        'done' => [
             ......
             'app:symlink_public_html'
        ]

        .....
     ]

Finally Let's Deploy

All you have to do now is push your code to Github and then run bash php artisan deploy If you setup everything correctly, Your Github Repo password and Server password will be requested multiple times during the deployment process

By Now, your app has been deployed successfully. You can now view your website. 🚀🚀🚀🚀

Other Notes;

After first deployment, you should change you deployment strategy to basic like in step 4 above
Your migration may not run until you follow this post Here
You can read more about Laravel deployer Here

DEV Community: Adinnu Benedict