Deploy a PHP site to Railway

PHP is a framework for building websites. Railway is a platform for hosting web apps. Learn how to host a PHP site on Railway.

Prerequisites

• Railway Account
• PHP

Create Home Page

On your local machine, create a index.php file.

<h1>Hello, World</h1>

Test your site.

php -S localhost:8000

Deploy to Railway

Install the Railway CLI tool:

npm i -g @railway/cli

Login to your Railway account:

railway login --browserless

Create a new Railway project:

railway init

Link your folder to your Railway project.

railway link

Deploy your app.

railway up --detach

When the site is ready, generate a domain.

railway domain

Update Site and Redeploy

Update home page, index.php:

<h1>Hello World!</h1>
<p>Happy to be here</p>

Test update locally:

php -S localhost:8000

Redeploy to Railway.

railway up --detach

Comments

[Boopathi]

This is a clear and concise guide to deploying a PHP site on Railway! I'm impressed with how easy it is to get started, thanks for sharing.

[Mark Munyaka]

Thanks for that. I try to keep things simple.

[Abdul Rehman]

I tried a similar approach with Railway for a while, but I found Cloudways to be a bit more convenient for managing PHP apps, especially when it comes to scaling and performance optimization. The control over server configurations is pretty solid, and their support is responsive if you ever need to troubleshoot. Definitely worth considering if anyone is looking for a more hands-off management experience. I recently purchased Cloudways using the 40% off black friday promo. Not sure if the offer is still up.