🚀 How to Start a Laravel Project (With XAMPP, phpMyAdmin, and Ubuntu Setup)

Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks used for building modern web applications. If you're just getting started, this guide will walk you through setting up a Laravel project from scratch, explain its folder structure, configure the .env file, and connect your project to a database using phpMyAdmin. We’ll use XAMPP on Ubuntu as the local server environment.

✅ Step 1: Install Laravel on Ubuntu

First, make sure your system is ready with the required tools:

📦 1. Install PHP and Composer

sudo apt update
sudo apt install php php-cli php-mbstring unzip curl php-xml composer

📦 2. Install Laravel Installer (Optional)

composer global require laravel/installer

Make sure the global composer vendor/bin directory is in your PATH. You can add this to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin:$PATH"

✅ Step 2: Create a New Laravel Project

There are two ways to create a Laravel project:

🔹 Using the Laravel Installer:

laravel new myproject

🔹 Using Composer (if you didn’t install the Laravel installer):

composer create-project laravel/laravel myproject

This will create a new directory called myproject with all Laravel files.

✅ Step 3: Understand Laravel Project Structure

Here’s a quick overview of the main folders:

• app/ – Contains your application logic, models, and controllers.
  
  

• bootstrap/ – Starts the Laravel framework.
  
  

• config/ – Holds configuration files.
  
  

• database/ – Migrations, seeders, and database-related stuff.
  
  

• public/ – The entry point for the app (index.php). Place your frontend assets here.
  
  

• resources/ – Views, assets (CSS, JS), and localization files.
  
  

• routes/ – All route definitions (web.php, api.php, etc).
  
  

• storage/ – Log files, compiled views, and file uploads.
  
  

• tests/ – Automated test files.
  
  

• .env – Environment configuration file (we'll talk about this next).
  
  

✅ Step 4: Configure .env File

The .env file stores environment-specific settings. Open .env inside your project folder and update the following lines for database configuration:

APP_NAME=Laravel
APP_URL=http://localhost/myproject/public
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel_db
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=

Note: The DB_PASSWORD is empty by default for XAMPP.

✅ Step 5: Set Up XAMPP and phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu

📥 Install XAMPP:

Go to https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html and download the Linux installer.

Run these commands:

cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x xampp-linux-x64-*.run
sudo ./xampp-linux-x64-*.run

🚀 Start XAMPP:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

Access phpMyAdmin at:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin

🧱 Create a Database

1. Visit phpMyAdmin.
   
   

2. Click New.
   
   

3. Create a database named laravel_db (or anything you used in .env).
   
   

✅ Step 6: Serve Your Laravel Project

Inside your project folder, run:

php artisan serve

You’ll see something like:

Starting Laravel development server: http://127.0.0.1:8000

If you want to use XAMPP’s Apache instead, move the Laravel project to /opt/lampp/htdocs:

sudo mv ~/myproject /opt/lampp/htdocs/

Then access it via:

http://localhost/myproject/public

✅ Bonus Tips

🔐 Permissions

If you face permission errors on storage/ or bootstrap/cache/, fix it with:

sudo chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache

🎉 You're Ready to Build with Laravel!

You now have a fully working Laravel environment on Ubuntu using XAMPP and phpMyAdmin. From here, you can start creating routes, controllers, models, and build your dream web application.