Laravel

Prerequisites

• OpenLiteSpeed with PHP 8.2+ (see Install PHP)
• Required PHP extensions: mbstring, xml, bcmath, curl, zip, tokenizer, json, openssl
• Composer installed
• MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or SQLite

Install Laravel

cd /var/www
composer create-project laravel/laravel example.com
cd example.com

# Set permissions
chown -R nobody:nobody storage bootstrap/cache
chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache

Configure the .env File

cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

Edit .env:

APP_NAME="My App"
APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://example.com

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel
DB_USERNAME=laraveluser
DB_PASSWORD=strong_password_here

CACHE_DRIVER=redis
SESSION_DRIVER=redis
QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis

Virtual Host Configuration

Laravel’s entry point is public/index.php. The OLS document root must point to the public/ directory:

virtualhost example {
  vhRoot                  /var/www/example.com
  configFile              conf/vhosts/example/vhconf.conf
  allowSymbolLink         1
  enableScript            1
  restrained              1

  docRoot                 $VH_ROOT/public/

  index {
    indexFiles             index.php, index.html
  }

  scripthandler {
    add                   lsapi:lsphp  php
  }

  rewrite {
    enable                1
    autoLoadHtaccess      1
  }
}

Rewrite Rules

Laravel requires all requests to be routed through index.php.

Option A: OLS Native Rewrite (in vhconf.conf)

rewrite {
  enable                  1
  rules                   <<<END_rules
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
  END_rules
}

Option B: .htaccess (with LiteHTTPD)

Laravel ships with a public/.htaccess file that works with the LiteHTTPD module:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

And in public/.htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Context for Static Assets

Serve static assets directly without PHP processing:

context /build/ {
  location                $VH_ROOT/public/build/
  allowBrowse             1

  extraHeaders {
    set                   Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000, immutable"
  }
}

context /storage/ {
  location                $VH_ROOT/storage/app/public/
  allowBrowse             1
}

Create the storage symlink:

php artisan storage:link

PHP Settings for Laravel

memory_limit = 256M
max_execution_time = 300
upload_max_filesize = 64M
post_max_size = 64M

; OPcache
opcache.enable = 1
opcache.memory_consumption = 256
opcache.max_accelerated_files = 20000
opcache.validate_timestamps = 0

With the LiteHTTPD module, you can also set per-directory overrides in .htaccess:

php_value memory_limit 512M
php_value max_execution_time 600

Production Optimization

# Cache configuration
php artisan config:cache

# Cache routes
php artisan route:cache

# Cache views
php artisan view:cache

# Optimize autoloader
composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev

Queue Workers

For Laravel queues, use systemd to manage the worker:

/etc/systemd/system/laravel-worker.service

[Unit]
Description=Laravel Queue Worker
After=network.target

[Service]
User=nobody
Group=nobody
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/example.com
ExecStart=/usr/local/lsws/lsphp84/bin/php artisan queue:work redis --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600
Restart=always
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

systemctl enable --now laravel-worker

Task Scheduling

Add to the nobody user’s crontab:

* * * * * cd /var/www/example.com && /usr/local/lsws/lsphp84/bin/php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Troubleshooting

500 Internal Server Error:

• Check storage/logs/laravel.log
• Verify storage/ and bootstrap/cache/ are writable by the OLS user
• Run php artisan config:clear if configuration cache is stale

404 on all routes:

• Verify rewrite rules are active (either in vhconf.conf or .htaccess)
• Ensure docRoot points to the public/ directory

Session/cache issues:

• Verify Redis is running if using Redis driver
• Check file permissions on storage/framework/sessions/ and storage/framework/cache/