Deployment

A checklist and guide for deploying DevPortal to a production server safely.

Pre-Deploy Checklist

• Set APP_ENV=production and APP_DEBUG=false in .env
• Generate a fresh app key: php devportal key:generate
• Run migrations: php devportal migrate --force
• Optimise autoloader: composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
• Clear and warm caches: php devportal optimize
• Point document root at public/
• Set up HTTPS (Let's Encrypt via Certbot)

Zero-Downtime Deployment

Use a symlink-swap strategy with a tool like Deployer or Envoyer:

releases/
  20260501_120000/   ← previous release
  20260518_093000/   ← new release
current -> releases/20260518_093000  ← symlink

Docker

A Dockerfile is included in the project root for containerised deployments:

docker build -t my-app .
docker run -p 80:80 --env-file .env my-app

Or with Docker Compose for a full stack (PHP-FPM + Nginx + MySQL):

docker compose up -d --build