Deployment

An AdminLTE 4 for Laravel app is a normal Laravel application — it runs on any PHP host with public/ as the document root. For production you build the Vite assets, cache config/routes/views, and run with APP_DEBUG=false.

Server requirements

Component	Requirement
PHP	8.3+ with `pdo`, `mbstring`, `openssl`, `ctype`, `fileinfo`, `bcmath`
Composer	2.x
Node.js	18+ (build step only)
Web server	Nginx or Apache → document root must be `public/`
Database	SQLite for a demo; MySQL/Postgres for heavier use

1. Build assets

Vite produces the hashed, content-versioned bundle into public/build/. Always run the build on the host (or in CI) before going live:

composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev
npm ci
npm run build

2. Run the installer's vendor copy

Make sure the plugin vendor files exist under public/vendor/ — they are emitted at request time by @pluginScripts and are not part of the Vite bundle:

php artisan adminlte:install        # copies public/vendor/* (idempotent)
php artisan adminlte:status         # confirm config, assets, vendor files

3. Cache & optimise

php artisan key:generate            # if APP_KEY is not set
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache

Set production-safe environment values:

APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://admin.example.com

4. Web server

Point the document root at public/ and route everything to index.php. A minimal Nginx + PHP-FPM server block:

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name admin.example.com;
    root /var/www/admin.example.com/public;

    index index.php;
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
    location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* { deny all; }
}

Managed hosting (Forge / Ploi / RunCloud)

Point the platform at your repo and use this deploy script — it covers build, migrations and caching in one pass:

composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev
npm ci && npm run build
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan config:cache && php artisan route:cache && php artisan view:cache

Updating

composer update colorlibhq/adminlte-laravel
npm ci && npm run build
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan config:cache && php artisan route:cache && php artisan view:cache

Disable the bundled showcase routes in production by setting 'demo' => false in config/adminlte.php (and 'docs' => false if you don't want the in-app docs at /docs). Both are guarded by middleware but are unnecessary in a real app.

Deployment checklist

public/ is the web root.
npm run build ran — the Vite manifest exists in public/build/.
public/vendor/* plugin files present (adminlte:install copies them).
APP_KEY set, APP_DEBUG=false.
config:cache, route:cache, view:cache run.
storage/ and bootstrap/cache/ writable.

AdminLTE 4 · Laravel port Edit on GitHub