Laravel is a popular open-source PHP framework that is designed for building web applications. In this article, we will explain how to install Laravel on an Ubuntu 22.04 server that is running Apache 2.

Before you begin, make sure that you have Apache 2 and PHP 7.4 installed on your Ubuntu server. You can check if Apache is installed by running the following command:

sudo apache2 --version

If Apache is not installed, you can install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get install apache2

Once Apache is installed, you can check if PHP is installed by running the following command:

php --version

If PHP is not installed, you can install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get install php7.4

Once Apache and PHP are installed, you need to install some additional PHP modules that are required by Laravel. You can do this by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install php7.4-common php7.4-cli php7.4-mbstring php7.4-xml php7.4-zip

This will install the necessary PHP modules, including the php7.4-common module, which provides common functions for PHP, the php7.4-cli module, which provides the PHP command-line interface, the php7.4-mbstring module, which provides support for multi-byte strings, the php7.4-xml module, which provides support for XML manipulation, and the php7.4-zip module, which provides support for reading and writing ZIP archives.

Once the necessary PHP modules are installed, you need to download and install Composer, which is a dependency manager for PHP. You can do this by running the following commands:

php -r "copy('<https://getcomposer.org/installer>', 'composer-setup.php');"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

These commands will download the Composer installer and run it, which will install Composer on your system. Once Composer is installed, you can use it to install Laravel by running the following command:

php composer.phar create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel laravel

This will create a new Laravel project in the laravel directory. You can then configure Apache to serve the Laravel project by creating a new virtual host configuration file. You can do this by using a text editor to create a new file in the /etc/apache2/sites-available directory. For example, if you want to create a virtual host configuration file for the laravel.example.com domain, you can create a laravel.example.com.conf file with the following content:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName laravel.example.com
  ServerAdmin admin@example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/laravel/public

  <Directory /var/www/laravel/public>
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
  </Directory>

  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

This virtual host configuration file defines the server name and document root for the laravel.example.com domain, and specifies the directory where Laravel’s public files are located. It also sets the AllowOverride directive to All, which allows Laravel to use its own routing rules and configuration settings.

Once you have created the virtual host configuration file, you need to enable it and disable the default virtual host configuration file by running the following commands:

sudo a2ensite laravel.example.com.conf
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

These commands will enable the laravel.example.com.conf virtual host configuration file, and disable the default 000-default.conf virtual host configuration file. Then, you can restart Apache to apply the changes by running the following command:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Once Apache is restarted, you can visit the laravel.example.com domain in your web browser to access your Laravel application. You should see the Laravel welcome page, which indicates that Laravel is installed and working correctly.

In conclusion, installing Laravel on an Ubuntu 22.04 server that is running Apache 2 is a straightforward process. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can quickly and easily set up a Laravel application and start developing your web applications with Laravel.