Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/0m1n3m/contacts-db/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
This guide walks you through deploying Contacts DB to a production server — whether that is a bare VPS, a shared hosting environment, or a managed platform like Laravel Forge or Ploi. It covers environment configuration, database migration, asset compilation, queue workers, the task scheduler, and web server setup. Follow each step in order for a clean, repeatable deployment.
Always set APP_DEBUG=false in production. Leaving debug mode on exposes full stack traces, environment variable values, and internal application details to anyone who triggers an error — including unauthenticated visitors.
Pre-deployment checklist
Configure the environment file
Copy .env.example to .env on the server and set the core variables:At minimum, set:APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://your-domain.com
Configure the database
Contacts DB ships with SQLite as the default for local development. In production, switch to MySQL or PostgreSQL:DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=contacts_db
DB_USERNAME=db_user
DB_PASSWORD=secure_password
Configure the mail driver
The default MAIL_MAILER=log writes mail to log files. Replace it with a real transport for production:MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailprovider.com
MAIL_PORT=587
MAIL_USERNAME=your@email.com
MAIL_PASSWORD=your_password
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=no-reply@your-domain.com
MAIL_FROM_NAME="Contacts DB"
smtp, mailgun, ses, postmark, and sendmail. Configure the queue connection
The default QUEUE_CONNECTION=database works out of the box once migrations have run. For higher throughput you can switch to Redis:QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis
REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1
REDIS_PORT=6379
Install PHP dependencies
Install only production dependencies and optimize the autoloader:composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev
Generate the application key
If the .env file does not yet have an APP_KEY, generate one: Compile frontend assets
Contacts DB uses Vite for frontend assets. Build the production bundle: Cache configuration, routes, and views
Caching these significantly reduces per-request overhead:php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache
Run database migrations
Apply all pending migrations with the --force flag (required in production to bypass the confirmation prompt):php artisan migrate --force
Seed the admin user
Create the initial admin account using the seeder:php artisan db:seed --class=AdminUserSeeder
Create the storage symlink
Make uploaded files publicly accessible: Set directory permissions
The web server user (typically www-data) must be able to write to two directories:chown -R www-data:www-data storage bootstrap/cache
chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache
Environment variables summary
A minimal production .env looks like this:
APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://your-domain.com
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=contacts_db
DB_USERNAME=db_user
DB_PASSWORD=secure_password
MAIL_MAILER=smtp
QUEUE_CONNECTION=database
FILESYSTEM_DISK=local
SESSION_DRIVER=database
CACHE_STORE=database
MAIL_*, REDIS_*, and AWS_* variables to match your infrastructure.
Queue worker
Contacts DB uses Laravel queues for sending notifications and processing background jobs. You must run at least one queue worker process continuously in production.
Supervisor configuration
Supervisor is the recommended way to keep the queue worker running and restart it automatically on failure. Create a configuration file at /etc/supervisor/conf.d/contacts-db-worker.conf:
[program:contacts-db-worker]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /var/www/contacts-db/artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3
directory=/var/www/contacts-db
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
numprocs=1
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/log/contacts-db-worker.log
supervisorctl reread
supervisorctl update
supervisorctl start contacts-db-worker:*
supervisorctl restart contacts-db-worker:*
Task scheduler
Contacts DB schedules background jobs (such as due-soon reminders) using Laravel’s built-in scheduler. Add a single crontab entry that runs every minute:
* * * * * cd /var/www/contacts-db && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1
Web server (Nginx)
Point Nginx at the public/ directory. Below is a minimal configuration for a standard HTTP server block. Add an SSL block via Certbot or your certificate provider for HTTPS:
server {
listen 80;
server_name your-domain.com;
root /var/www/contacts-db/public;
index index.php;
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
charset utf-8;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
deny all;
}
}
php8.3-fpm.sock with the socket path for the PHP-FPM version installed on your server. After editing, test and reload Nginx:
nginx -t
systemctl reload nginx
The composer run dev script (defined in composer.json) starts a multi-process development environment using concurrently — running php artisan serve, queue:listen, pail, and Vite’s dev server together. Never use composer run dev in production. Use a proper web server (Nginx + PHP-FPM), a Supervisor-managed queue worker, and the compiled Vite assets from npm run build.
Post-deployment verification
After completing all steps, verify the deployment is healthy:
# Check that the application returns a 200 response
curl -o /dev/null -s -w "%{http_code}" https://your-domain.com
# Confirm the queue worker is running
supervisorctl status contacts-db-worker:*
# Confirm the scheduler is registered
php artisan schedule:list
# Tail the application log for errors
tail -f storage/logs/laravel.log
