Deploying a Laravel Portfolio to AWS EC2: Complete Production Setup

[MyrinNew]

Why AWS EC2 Over Shared Hosting?


Full server control for custom configurations


Scalability as your projects grow


Professional credibility with clients


Learning experience with cloud infrastructure


Tech Stack

Backend: Laravel 12


Frontend: Tailwind CSS


Server: Ubuntu 22.04 on AWS EC2 t2.micro


Web Server: Nginx


Database: SQLite (perfect for portfolios)


SSL: Let's Encrypt (free)


Step-by-Step Deployment

1. EC2 Setup


Launch t2.micro instance (free tier)

Configure security groups: HTTP (80), HTTPS (443), SSH (22)

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2. Server Configuration


Update system

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y


Install PHP 8.3 and extensions

sudo apt install php8.3-fpm php8.3-mysql php8.3-xml php8.3-curl php8.3-zip


Install Nginx

sudo apt install nginx


Install Composer

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer


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3. Laravel Deployment


Clone your repository

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/portfolio.git /var/www/portfolio


Install dependencies

cd /var/www/portfolio

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


Set permissions

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/portfolio

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/portfolio

sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/portfolio/storage


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4. Nginx Configuration

server {

listen 80;

server_name yourdomain.com;

root /var/www/portfolio/public;

index index.php;




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

location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}





}


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5. SSL with Let's Encrypt


Install Certbot

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx


Get SSL certificate

sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com


Auto-renewal (already configured)

sudo systemctl status certbot.timer


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Auto-Deployment with GitHub Webhooks

Created a webhook endpoint that automatically pulls changes: