From Local to Production
Getting a Laravel app running locally is straightforward. Getting it running reliably in production with proper SSL, database connectivity, asset compilation, and file storage is where the real engineering begins.
The Stack
This portfolio runs on a DigitalOcean VPS managed by Dokploy — a self-hosted PaaS that orchestrates Docker containers. The application uses a multi-stage Dockerfile that builds the frontend assets with pnpm, installs PHP dependencies with Composer, and produces a lean production image with nginx and php-fpm under supervisor. Traefik handles reverse proxying and auto-provisions SSL certificates via Let's Encrypt.
Full article coming soon.