How to Install Laravel on Amazon Cloud (AWS EC2)

Laravel is a popular PHP framework that has become the standard development toolkit for many PHP projects. In many cases, developers prefer Laravel because of its extensive features and tools that ensure a streamlined development experience.

An important challenge for Laravel powered projects is the hosting solution that is considered the cornerstone of the project’s performance.  For instance, Laravel on AWS is a great performance-focused combo that is very popular among the developers, mainly because of the features and very high benchmarks.

The Laravel performance on AWS is smooth and gives applications a glitch-free experience on the web. However, installing Laravel on AWS EC2 is not for everyone because deploying Laravel powered projects on Amazon’s AWS EC2 hosting server comes with its own set of challenges. Since the combination of Laravel and AWS is so popular that developers prefer the struggle as it pays off through reliability and high-quality hosting features.

In this article, I will demonstrate, step-by-step, how to host Laravel 8.0 on Amazon Cloud hosting services.

How to Install Laravel on AWS

Step 1: Selecting Application

Sign up for a Cloudways Account. After the signup, you will be taken to the Console. From the application dropdown, choose Laravel from the list of available applications.

Name your application, server, and select the project from the drop-down menu.

Step 2: Select AWS as Server Provider

Select AWS from the available list of infrastructure providers.

Step 3: Select the Server Size

Select appropriate server-sizes

Step 4: Select the Server Bandwidth

Select expected bandwidth usage for your Laravel powered website.

Step 5: Select the Server Storage Sizes

Next, select the appropriate storage sizes for the database and application files separately.

Step 6: Select the Server Location

Select the server location. This choice affects server latency so choose the location closest to your target audience in order to provide the best experience to the visitors.

Step 7: Launching a Server

Check the cost of the server and then click the Launch Server button to complete the setup.

You can access the Laravel webpage using your default URL. The following screen will indicate that you have successfully installed the Laravel framework.

Why Cloudways?

Laravel on AWS using a Managed Hosting Solution is a great option for leveraging the power of the Laravel framework without getting bogged down in the complexities of managing an AWS account.

The Cloudways Hosting Stack

Cloudways offers a very optimized stack consisting of NGINX, Varnish, Apache, Memcached, MySQL, and PHP-FPM. Moreover, advanced packages (such as Redis cache and ElasticSearch) can be added without any extra configuration whenever you enable them from the interface. Cloudways lets you monitor over 15 important metrics in graphical form, to keep you aware of how your server is performing.

Managed Security

The cloud servers on Cloudways come with managed security. Which means you get hassle-free security for your server. The Platform is protected by multi-layered security management which also comes with a strong firewall. And what about security updates on your Laravel server, you ask? Well, they are applied regularly on both the OS and firmware. Moreover, backups are also managed and they are kept on AWS S3 storage.

SSH & Teams Feature

SFTP/SSH access and Team Management are two important features of the Cloudways Platform. You can set up the server and application-level access for the team members through the Teams feature. Developers also appreciate the ease of integration with Git. Likewise, once the basic functionality of the project is ready, developers can test it at the unlimited staging URLs to identify the issues.

IP Whitelisting and Remote MySQL Connections

Easily whitelist IP addresses to simplify the process of setting up MySQL remote connections to databases hosted on the Cloudways managed servers. Cloudways allows IP whitelisting in just a single click.

Superb Customer Support

Our customer service is top-notch, available for you 24/7/365 through the Live Chat. 

Conclusion

Deploying the Laravel on AWS EC2 has been simplified by Cloudways Managed Hosting, and additional security and performance are implied with every server and application launched using Cloudways.  

Feel free to ask any query that you might have regarding the installation process in the comments section below and I’ll make sure to answer it.