Deploy Laravel on Ubuntu 24.04: Nginx + PHP-FPM Setup

In this tutorial, you will deploy Laravel on Ubuntu 24.04 with Nginx, PHP-FPM, Composer, correct Laravel permissions, HTTP verification, and an optional domain-backed HTTPS step.

Deploy Laravel on VPS means running a Laravel PHP application on your own Linux virtual machine, with Nginx handling public web traffic and PHP-FPM executing Laravel through the public/index.php front controller. This tutorial uses a Raff Ubuntu 24.04 VM and a fresh Laravel app so every command has a clean, verifiable result.

Raff Technologies operates 10,000+ VMs from Vint Hill, Virginia, with Raff VM plans built for production Linux workloads. Raff's General Purpose 2 vCPU / 4 GB VM costs $9.99/month with 80 GB NVMe SSD and unmetered VM traffic.

📌 Testing note: The HTTP deployment path in this tutorial was verified on a Raff Ubuntu 24.04 VM. The HTTPS section is included for production use, but it requires a real domain or subdomain pointed to the VM. Certbot was not executed during this test run because no domain was available.

Prerequisites:

• A Raff Ubuntu 24.04 VM
• SSH access with sudo privileges
• A domain or subdomain if you want to complete HTTPS
• A local terminal with ssh
• A Laravel project, or the sample Laravel app created in this tutorial

This tutorial was tested on a Raff General Purpose VM with 2 vCPU, 4 GB DDR5 RAM, 80 GB NVMe storage, running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Use these placeholders throughout the tutorial:

Step 1 — Prepare the Ubuntu VM

Start with a clean Ubuntu 24.04 VM so Nginx, PHP-FPM, Composer, and Laravel are installed from a known state.

Connect to your server:

ssh root@your_server_ip

When SSH asks whether you want to continue connecting, type:

yes

Update the package index and installed packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

Install basic tools used later in the deployment:

sudo apt install -y curl unzip git software-properties-common ca-certificates

Verify the server is running Ubuntu 24.04:

clear
lsb_release -a

Expected output includes:

Description:    Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Step 2 — Install Nginx and PHP-FPM

Install Nginx, PHP 8.3-FPM, Composer, and the PHP extensions Laravel needs on Ubuntu 24.04.

sudo apt install -y nginx \
  php8.3-fpm php8.3-cli php8.3-common \
  php8.3-curl php8.3-mbstring php8.3-xml \
  php8.3-bcmath php8.3-zip php8.3-sqlite3 \
  php8.3-intl composer

Enable Nginx and PHP-FPM:

sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo systemctl enable php8.3-fpm
sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl start php8.3-fpm

Verify both services are running:

sudo systemctl status nginx --no-pager
sudo systemctl status php8.3-fpm --no-pager

Expected output includes:

Active: active (running)

Check the installed versions:

clear
nginx -v
php -v
composer --version

Expected output includes Nginx, PHP 8.3, and Composer.

Verify Laravel's required PHP extensions are loaded:

php -m | grep -Ei 'ctype|curl|dom|fileinfo|filter|hash|mbstring|openssl|pcre|pdo|session|tokenizer|xml|bcmath'

Expected output includes these modules:

bcmath
ctype
curl
dom
fileinfo
filter
hash
mbstring
openssl
pcre
PDO
session
tokenizer
xml

Step 3 — Configure firewall rules

Open SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS before sending public traffic to the server.

Allow SSH first:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH

Allow Nginx web traffic:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

Enable UFW:

sudo ufw --force enable

Verify the firewall rules:

sudo ufw status

Expected output:

Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere
Nginx Full                 ALLOW       Anywhere

Open the server IP in your browser:

http://your_server_ip

Expected result: the default Nginx welcome page loads.

Step 4 — Create the Laravel application

Create a fresh Laravel application in /var/www/laravel. For a real project, replace the composer create-project command with your Git clone and run the same deployment steps after it.

Create the application directory:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/laravel
sudo chown -R "$USER":www-data /var/www/laravel

Move into the directory:

cd /var/www/laravel

Create a new Laravel project:

composer create-project laravel/laravel .

Verify Laravel is installed:

php artisan --version

Expected output:

Laravel Framework 13.x.x

This tutorial was verified with:

Laravel Framework 13.17.0

Confirm the public entry point exists:

ls -la public/index.php artisan .env

Expected output includes:

artisan
.env
public/index.php

Step 5 — Configure environment and permissions

Set production environment values, create the SQLite database file, and give Nginx/PHP-FPM write access only where Laravel needs it.

Move into the app directory:

cd /var/www/laravel

Set production environment values. For HTTP testing by IP, use your server IP:

sed -i 's/^APP_ENV=.*/APP_ENV=production/' .env
sed -i 's/^APP_DEBUG=.*/APP_DEBUG=false/' .env
sed -i 's#^APP_URL=.*#APP_URL=http://your_server_ip#' .env

Use SQLite for this first deployment:

sed -i 's/^DB_CONNECTION=.*/DB_CONNECTION=sqlite/' .env
sed -i '/^DB_HOST=/d;/^DB_PORT=/d;/^DB_DATABASE=/d;/^DB_USERNAME=/d;/^DB_PASSWORD=/d' .env
touch database/database.sqlite

Run the default migrations:

php artisan migrate --force

Expected output includes either migrations running or:

Nothing to migrate.

Set Laravel permissions without using chmod 777:

sudo chown -R "$USER":www-data /var/www/laravel
sudo chmod -R ug+rwX storage bootstrap/cache database
sudo find storage bootstrap/cache database -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;

Clear and rebuild Laravel caches:

php artisan optimize:clear
php artisan optimize

Verify the environment:

clear
grep -E '^APP_ENV=|^APP_DEBUG=|^APP_URL=|^DB_CONNECTION=' .env

Expected output:

APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=http://your_server_ip
DB_CONNECTION=sqlite

Step 6 — Configure Nginx for Laravel

Configure Nginx to serve Laravel from the public directory and pass PHP requests to PHP-FPM.

Laravel must be served from the public directory. Do not point Nginx to /var/www/laravel, because the project root contains private files such as .env, config files, storage, logs, and application code.

Create the Nginx server block. For HTTP testing by IP, set APP_HOST to your VM public IP:

APP_HOST="your_server_ip"
APP_DIR="/var/www/laravel"

sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/laravel > /dev/null <<NGINX
server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    server_name ${APP_HOST};
    root ${APP_DIR}/public;

    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";

    index index.php;
    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files \$uri \$uri/ /index.php?\$query_string;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }

    error_page 404 /index.php;

    location ~ ^/index\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME \$realpath_root\$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;
    }

    location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
        deny all;
    }
}
NGINX

Disable the default Nginx site and enable the Laravel site:

sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo ln -sfn /etc/nginx/sites-available/laravel /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/laravel

Test the Nginx configuration:

sudo nginx -t

Expected output:

syntax is ok
test is successful

Reload Nginx:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Verify Nginx is serving the Laravel site over HTTP:

curl -I http://your_server_ip

Expected output includes:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx

Open this URL in your browser:

http://your_server_ip

Expected result: the Laravel welcome page loads through Nginx and PHP-FPM.

Step 7 — Enable HTTPS when a domain is ready

HTTPS requires a real domain or subdomain pointed to your VM. Let's Encrypt and Certbot cannot issue a normal browser-trusted certificate for only a raw IP address.

If you do not have a domain yet, skip this step for now and continue to Step 8. The Laravel deployment will still work over HTTP for testing. For production, return to this step after creating a DNS record.

Create this DNS record at your DNS provider:

That should produce a domain like:

laravel.example.com

After DNS resolves, update Laravel's APP_URL:

cd /var/www/laravel

APP_HOST="laravel.example.com"

sed -i "s#^APP_URL=.*#APP_URL=https://${APP_HOST}#" .env

Update the Nginx server_name to the domain:

sudo sed -i "s/server_name .*/server_name ${APP_HOST};/" /etc/nginx/sites-available/laravel

Test and reload Nginx:

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Install Certbot:

sudo apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Request the certificate:

sudo certbot --nginx -d "$APP_HOST" --redirect

Follow the Certbot prompts for email, terms, and redirect behavior.

Verify HTTPS:

curl -I https://laravel.example.com

Expected output includes:

HTTP/2 200

Verify automatic renewal:

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Expected output includes:

Congratulations, all simulated renewals succeeded

Step 8 — Optimize Laravel for production

Install production Composer dependencies, cache Laravel configuration, and verify the production environment.

Move into the app directory:

cd /var/www/laravel

Install production dependencies and optimize the autoloader:

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Cache Laravel's production files:

php artisan optimize

Verify the environment:

php artisan about --only=environment

Expected output includes:

Environment
Application Name
Laravel Version
PHP Version
Environment
Debug Mode

Confirm debug mode is off:

grep -E '^APP_ENV=|^APP_DEBUG=|^APP_URL=' .env

Expected output for HTTP testing:

APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=http://your_server_ip

Expected output after the HTTPS step:

APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://laravel.example.com

Step 9 — Verify the full Laravel deployment

Verify the browser endpoint, PHP-FPM handoff, Nginx logs, and Laravel logs before considering the deployment complete.

For HTTP testing, set:

APP_TEST_URL="http://your_server_ip"

If you completed HTTPS, use:

APP_TEST_URL="https://laravel.example.com"

Check the response headers:

curl -I "$APP_TEST_URL"

Expected output for HTTP testing:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.24.0 (Ubuntu)

Expected output after HTTPS:

HTTP/2 200
Server: nginx

Check that the Laravel page loads:

curl -s "$APP_TEST_URL" | grep -i "Laravel" | head

Expected output includes:

<title>Laravel</title>

Check Nginx errors:

sudo tail -n 30 /var/log/nginx/error.log

Expected result: no new PHP-FPM, permission, or upstream errors. A line such as client closed keepalive connection is not a deployment failure.

Check Laravel logs:

sudo test -f /var/www/laravel/storage/logs/laravel.log \
  && sudo tail -n 30 /var/www/laravel/storage/logs/laravel.log \
  || echo "No Laravel log file yet."

Expected result: either no log file yet or no new production errors.

At this point, Laravel is verified through Nginx and PHP-FPM. If you used only the server IP, the deployment is verified over HTTP. If you completed the domain-backed Certbot step, the deployment is verified over HTTPS.

Cleanup

Use this section only if you want to remove the Laravel deployment from the VM.

⚠️ Warning: The following commands delete the Laravel application directory, Nginx site, and TLS certificate. Back up application code and data first.

If you issued a certificate, delete it first:

sudo certbot delete --cert-name laravel.example.com

Remove the Nginx site:

sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/laravel
sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-available/laravel
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Delete the Laravel application:

sudo rm -rf /var/www/laravel

Remove public web firewall rules if this VM will no longer serve websites:

sudo ufw delete allow 'Nginx Full'
sudo ufw status

Troubleshooting

Nginx returns 403 or 404

Cause: Nginx is not pointing to Laravel's public directory, or the server block is not enabled.

Fix:

grep -R "root" /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/laravel
ls -la /var/www/laravel/public/index.php
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

The Nginx root must be:

/var/www/laravel/public

Nginx returns 502 Bad Gateway

Cause: PHP-FPM is stopped, or the Nginx fastcgi_pass socket path is wrong.

Fix:

sudo systemctl status php8.3-fpm --no-pager
ls -la /run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock
grep fastcgi_pass /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/laravel

The server block should use:

fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;

Restart PHP-FPM and reload Nginx:

sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Laravel returns 500 Server Error

Cause: Missing app key, wrong permissions, failed migration, or an invalid .env value.

Fix:

cd /var/www/laravel
php artisan key:generate --force
php artisan migrate --force
sudo chmod -R ug+rwX storage bootstrap/cache database
php artisan optimize:clear
php artisan optimize

Check the Laravel log:

sudo tail -n 50 /var/www/laravel/storage/logs/laravel.log

Certbot fails domain validation

Cause: The domain does not point to the VM public IP, or ports 80 and 443 are blocked.

Fix:

dig +short laravel.example.com
curl -I http://laravel.example.com
sudo ufw status

The domain must resolve to your Raff VM public IPv4 address, and UFW must allow Nginx Full.

The site works by IP but HTTPS is not available

Cause: HTTPS needs a domain. A raw IP address can load the Laravel app over HTTP, but Certbot needs a domain name for a normal browser-trusted certificate.

Fix: Create an A record pointing a subdomain to the VM IP, update APP_URL, update Nginx server_name, and run the Certbot commands in Step 7.

Uploaded files are not publicly visible

Cause: Laravel's public storage symlink has not been created.

Fix:

cd /var/www/laravel
php artisan storage:link
ls -la public/storage

Expected output shows public/storage pointing to storage/app/public.

Conclusion

You now have Laravel running on an Ubuntu 24.04 VM with Nginx, PHP-FPM, Composer, production environment values, correct writable directories, and terminal verification. In this test run, the application was verified over HTTP using the VM public IP. For production HTTPS, point a domain to the VM and complete the Certbot step.

If you have not deployed your Raff VM yet, you can launch one from the Raff VM product page.

Next steps:

• Set up a full LEMP foundation with /learn/tutorials/set-up-lemp-stack-ubuntu-24-04
• Install MySQL with /learn/tutorials/install-mysql-ubuntu-24-04
• Secure Nginx with /learn/tutorials/secure-nginx-lets-encrypt-ubuntu-24-04
• Compare deployment patterns with /learn/guides/shared-hosting-to-raff-saas-migration

Sources

• Laravel 13 deployment documentation
• Laravel 13 installation documentation
• Ubuntu package details for php8.3-fpm on Ubuntu 24.04 noble