"Silent Launch" on LIVE Server

It's time to deploy this to a live server! But for this, we need a few things:

• Point a domain name to the server's IP address.
• Run a checklist to see that everything is up and ready.
• Do a silent launch to a few users to see if everything works.

So let's get started!

Pointing a Domain Name

Pointing a domain to our server requires you to access your DNS management tool. It can be one of:

• Go Daddy
• Namecheap
• Cloudflare
• etc.

In that tool, you have to create a DNS record that would point to your forge server IP address:

Once this is pointed out, we have to change the Site Domain in Forge:

Visit your Forge, enter the server, and click on the site you want to deploy. Then click on the Settings sidebar item:

Here, you have to change the Site Domain to the domain you pointed to the server:

This will make our develop server accessible via the domain name.

Now for production, there are two ways to do this:

• Create a new Server and point the domain to it. This is the best way to do it, as it will keep the develop server for development purposes only.
• Add another Site to the same server and point the domain to it. This might be cheaper but will mix the production and development environments.

We will add another site to the same server for this tutorial's sake. So let's do that:

Note: To create a new production server, follow the same steps as develop server creation.

To add a site to any server, visit the server, click on the Sites sidebar item, and click on the New Site:

Enter your domain name and click on the Add Site button.

Note: You must point the domain to the new IP address for a separate server.

Once the site is added, we can add a Database to it. Click on the Databases sidebar item and fill out the Add Database form:

Next is our Git Repository installation. Go back to your site and click on the Git Repository sidebar item. Fill out the form with your repository details:

Note: Select main as your branch, and remember to select the newly created database.

This should open a familiar Application page (the same as our dev server). From here, we have to go through a checklist to see if everything is up and running.

Running a Checklist

Checklists are a great way to configure a server. We recommend you create it for each project and adapt it to your needs. Here is a basic checklist that you can use:

1. The APP key is set
2. The APP URL is set
3. Database settings are correct
4. Storage link is created
5. Google Secrets are set
6. OpenAI Secrets are set
7. AWS S3 secrets are set
8. Deployment Script is set
9. Sentry is set
10. Queue is set
11. SSL is enabled

Of course, there are more things. For example, if your project uses a caching system, you should add that to the checklist.

Now, let's look at our servers:

For dev, we need to change our APP_URL since we just added a domain name and added an SSL certificate:

First, visit the Environment sidebar item and change the APP_URL to the domain name:

We have changed this to our domain http://dev.linksletter.com

But now, if we try to load the page, we will see an SSL error:

So, let's add an SSL certificate. Visit the SSL sidebar item and click on the Let's Encrypt button:

Leave everything as is and click on the Obtain Certificate button. Please wait for it to finish, and then try to load the page again. It should load without any errors:

And for production, we have to set everything up. So let's do that:

Configuring .env File

Let's open the Environment sidebar item and fill in:

• APP_URL
• SENTRY_LARAVEL_DSN
• GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID
• GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET
• OPENAI_KEY
• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
• AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• AWS_BUCKET

Once that is done, save the changes.

Note: Depending on your project, You might need to add or change more variables.

Adding Deployment Script

To have a deployment script, we can use the dev server script:

# The first line should be `cd ...` to navigate to the project directory - keep it as is!
 
if [ -f artisan ]; then
    $FORGE_PHP artisan down
fi
 
git pull origin $FORGE_SITE_BRANCH
$FORGE_COMPOSER install --no-dev --no-interaction --prefer-dist --optimize-autoloader
 
npm install
npm run build
 
rm -rf /node_modules
 
if [ -f artisan ]; then
    $FORGE_PHP artisan cache:clear
    $FORGE_PHP artisan view:clear
    $FORGE_PHP artisan route:cache
    $FORGE_PHP artisan config:cache
    $FORGE_PHP artisan view:cache
fi
 
( flock -w 10 9 || exit 1
    echo 'Restarting FPM...'; sudo -S service $FORGE_PHP_FPM reload ) 9>/tmp/fpmlock
 
if [ -f artisan ]; then
    $FORGE_PHP artisan migrate --force
    $FORGE_PHP artisan up
fi

In fact, the only difference is the first line—navigating to the project. Other than that, your dev and production scripts should stay identical. This helps you see production issues before hitting the production server.

Adding Queue

Let's add a Queue worker by visiting Queue in the sidebar:

In the form, we will change:

• Connection to database - since we use the database for the queue. (you can use redis, but then you have to change .env files QUEUE_CONNECTION to redis)
• Check the Always Run, Even In Maintenance Mode - this will keep the queue running even if the site is in maintenance mode.

And that's it! Our base queue is ready.

Note: You can read more about Queues in Production on our Practical Laravel Queues on Live Server

Adding SSL

We have to repeat what we did for the dev server for SSL. Visit the SSL sidebar item and click the Let's Encrypt button. Wait for it to install, and you should have SSL enabled.

Linking Storage

This one is pretty simple, just SSH into the server and run the following command:

cd /home/forge/v2.linksletter.com
php artisan storage:link

First Deployment

Now that everything is set up let's make the first deployment. Visit the Deployment sidebar item and click the Deploy Now button. This should deploy the site to the server.

That's it! Now, we have our checklist done. Next is to do a silent launch.

Silent Launch

Now, here's a real problem - we are live on both servers, but we are not ready to give the link to the public. How about we do a silent launch?

For this, we can use the maintenance mode! Laravel allows us to set a key to gain access while it's in maintenance mode. So let's do that:

Visit your Site in Forge and look for this button:

Click on it and generate the secret:

Then hit Enable Maintenance Mode, and your site will be in maintenance mode. But if you visit the site, you will see a maintenance page. To bypass this, visit your site with the secret key:

https://dev.linksletter.com/your-secret just like this https://dev.linksletter.com/lnop3xpfh95k6fkz707h

This should load the site as if it were not in maintenance mode. You can now share this link with your team to test the site.

Of course, this was just for the dev server. We need to do the same for the production server.

After this is done, we need to slightly modify our Deployment script. For both dev and production comment the following lines out (by adding # in front)

#$FORGE_PHP artisan down
 
// ...
 
#$FORGE_PHP artisan up

If we don't do this, our deployment will remove the maintenance mode, and the site will be live. We want something else. We want to keep the site in maintenance mode until we are ready to launch it.

That's it for the basics of deploying. But that's not all. We are currently going down with each deployment. And that's not good once we have users, as it will break their experience. So, in the next lesson, we will add Zero-Downtime Deployment to our deployment process.