Guide How to Deploy Laravel on CyberPanel (OpenLiteSpeed): Tested Step by Step

**JAY** · (This post was last modified: 10-28-2026, 04:59 AM by JAY.)

How to Deploy Laravel on CyberPanel (OpenLiteSpeed): Tested Step by Step

Laravel runs fine on CyberPanel's OpenLiteSpeed, and the

Code:

.htaccess

that ships with Laravel works as it is. The two things that trip people up are the document root (it must be

Code:

public/

, not the project folder) and the development settings Laravel starts with. We deployed a fresh Laravel 13 app on our test server at

Code:

laravel.cyber.adminslab.com

and checked every step.

What you need

A website in CyberPanel (ours is
Code:
cyber.adminslab.com
, Linux user
Code:
cyber2602
). See creating a website.
Composer and git: both were already installed by CyberPanel (
Code:
/usr/bin/composer
, Composer 2.10.3).
PHP 8.3 or newer with the usual extensions. On our server mbstring, xml, dom, curl, zip, pdo_mysql, bcmath, fileinfo, tokenizer, openssl, ctype and intl were all loaded. Check yours:
Code:
php -m
.
A DNS A record for the new name pointing to your server (ours:
Code:
laravel.cyber
at Cloudflare, DNS only).

Step 1: Create the project as the site user
Never run Composer as root for a website. Files would belong to root and PHP couldn't write to

Code:

storage/

. Run it as the site's user, from the site's home folder (one level above

Code:

public_html

):

Code:

cd /home/cyber.adminslab.com
sudo -u cyber2602 -H composer create-project laravel/laravel laravel --no-interaction

Run plain

Code:

composer

as root and it stops to ask "Continue as root/super user [yes]?". That prompt is the hint you are about to do it wrong.

The installer ended with the first migrations (

Code:

create_users_table

,

Code:

create_cache_table

,

Code:

create_jobs_table

: DONE). New Laravel projects use SQLite by default, so this works without a database. Check it:

Code:

cd laravel
sudo -u cyber2602 php artisan --version

We got Laravel Framework 13.38.0.

Step 2: Add the domain with the right document root
Then add the domain in Websites > Create Sub/Addon Domain, with the document root pointing at Laravel's

Code:

public

folder:

Domain Type: Sub Domain (or Addon Domain for a different domain name)
Domain Name:
Code:
laravel.cyber.adminslab.com
Document Root Path:
Code:
laravel/public
(CyberPanel puts
Code:
/home/cyber.adminslab.com/
in front)
PHP: the same version you used in Step 1

CyberPanel issued a Let's Encrypt certificate during creation ("Domain successfully created"). On our build the form sometimes cleared the domain fields after we picked the Domain Type; check them again before you click Create Domain. More on the form in our subdomain guide.

Why public/? Everything above

Code:

public/

(

Code:

.env

with your app key and passwords,

Code:

storage/

,

Code:

vendor/

) must not be reachable from the web.

Step 3: Remove CyberPanel's index.html
CyberPanel drops its "CyberPanel Installed" page into every new document root. In our

Code:

laravel/public

folder we found a new

Code:

index.html

next to Laravel's

Code:

index.php

, and the folder permissions had changed to

Code:

drwxr-x---

(owner

Code:

cyber2602

, group

Code:

nogroup

). Laravel still answered on

Code:

/

, but don't leave it to chance:

Code:

rm /home/cyber.adminslab.com/laravel/public/index.html

Step 4: Switch .env to production
A fresh Laravel project ships with development settings. This is what

Code:

.env

had right after install:

Code:

APP_ENV=local
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://localhost:8000
DB_CONNECTION=sqlite

Code:

APP_DEBUG=true

on a live site shows full error pages with file paths and settings to anyone who triggers an error. Fix it:

Code:

cd /home/cyber.adminslab.com/laravel
sed -i 's/^APP_ENV=.*/APP_ENV=production/; s/^APP_DEBUG=.*/APP_DEBUG=false/' .env
sed -i 's|^APP_URL=.*|APP_URL=https://laravel.cyber.adminslab.com|' .env
sudo -u cyber2602 php artisan optimize

Code:

optimize

caches config, events, routes and views. Run it again after every change to

Code:

.env

or after you deploy new code, or the old cached values stay active.

Step 5: Check it
After switching to production and caching, every check passed:
[Image: attachment.php?aid=537]

Code:

U=https://laravel.cyber.adminslab.com
for p in / /up /nope /.env; do curl -s -o /dev/null -w "$p %{http_code}\n" $U$p; done

Code:
/ 200
: the welcome page.
Code:
/up 200
: Laravel's health route. This proves URL rewriting works: OpenLiteSpeed read Laravel's own
Code:
public/.htaccess
, no extra rules needed.
Code:
/nope 404
: a Laravel 404, not a server error.
Code:
/.env 403
: blocked (and it's outside the document root anyway).

Step 6: The scheduler
If your app uses Laravel's task scheduler, it needs one cron job that runs every minute. You can add it in the panel (cron jobs in CyberPanel) or from SSH as root:

Code:

L='* * * * * cd /home/cyber.adminslab.com/laravel && /usr/local/lsws/lsphp83/bin/php artisan schedule:run >/dev/null 2>&1'
(crontab -u cyber2602 -l; echo "$L") | crontab -u cyber2602 -
crontab -u cyber2602 -l

The list now showed our existing WordPress job plus the new Laravel line. Use the full PHP path of the version your site runs.

Using MySQL instead of SQLite
We stayed on SQLite for this test. For MySQL/MariaDB, create a database and user in CyberPanel (databases in CyberPanel), then set in

Code:

.env

:

Code:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=yoursite_db
DB_USERNAME=yoursite_user
DB_PASSWORD=the-password-you-set

and run

Code:

sudo -u SITEUSER php artisan migrate --force

followed by

Code:

php artisan optimize

(as the site user).

Common problems

You see the "CyberPanel Installed" page: Step 3, delete
Code:
public/index.html
.
You see a directory listing or Laravel's source: the document root is the project folder, not
Code:
public/
.
500 error, "Permission denied" in storage/logs: files were created as root. Fix:
Code:
chown -R cyber2602:cyber2602 /home/cyber.adminslab.com/laravel
.
Changes to .env do nothing: the config is cached. Run
Code:
php artisan optimize
again (as the site user).
Composer runs out of memory on a small VPS:
Code:
COMPOSER_MEMORY_LIMIT=-1
in front of the command, or add swap.

More CyberPanel guides

Tested on CyberPanel 3.0 (build 8, OpenLiteSpeed edition) on Ubuntu 24.04, October 2026. Menu names can change slightly between versions.

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Guide How to Deploy Laravel on CyberPanel (OpenLiteSpeed): Tested Step by Step

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