Example 3: Other Environments (Custom VPS / Docker / Self-Hosted)

If you deploy your Laravel application to a self-managed Linux VPS, Kubernetes, or Docker setup without Laravel Cloud or Forge, you need to configure Supervisor (for the background processes) and Nginx (to proxy WebSocket traffic to Laravel Reverb).

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Step 1: Configure Supervisor for Queue Workers & Reverb

Install Supervisor (apt install supervisor) and create two process configurations in /etc/supervisor/conf.d/:

1. Chat Queue Worker (/etc/supervisor/conf.d/laravel-chat-worker.conf)

[program:laravel-chat-worker]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /var/www/app/artisan queue:work redis --queue=chat,default --sleep=3 --tries=1 --timeout=120 --max-time=3600
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stopasgroup=true
killasgroup=true
user=www-data
numprocs=3
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/app/storage/logs/chat-worker.log
stopwaitsecs=130

(If you use Laravel Horizon, run a single command=php /var/www/app/artisan horizon daemon instead.)

2. Laravel Reverb Server (/etc/supervisor/conf.d/laravel-reverb.conf)

[program:laravel-reverb]
process_name=%(program_name)s
command=php /var/www/app/artisan reverb:start --host=127.0.0.1 --port=8080 --no-interaction
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stopasgroup=true
killasgroup=true
user=www-data
numprocs=1
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/app/storage/logs/reverb.log
stopwaitsecs=60

Reload Supervisor to start both services:

sudo supervisorctl reread
sudo supervisorctl update
sudo supervisorctl start all

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Step 2: Configure Nginx Reverse Proxy for WebSockets (/app & /apps)

Browsers connect to Laravel Reverb over wss://yourdomain.com/app/{REVERB_APP_KEY} on port 443, while your Laravel queue worker publishes events to https://yourdomain.com/apps/{REVERB_APP_ID}/events.

Add the following location blocks inside your HTTPS (listen 443 ssl) Nginx server block so WebSocket upgrade requests are forwarded to 127.0.0.1:8080:

# Proxy WebSocket connections (/app) and Reverb HTTP API calls (/apps)
location ~ ^/(app|apps) {
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header Scheme $scheme;
    proxy_set_header SERVER_PORT $server_port;
    proxy_set_header REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";

    proxy_read_timeout 60s;
    proxy_send_timeout 60s;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
}

Reload Nginx after updating the configuration:

sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

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Step 3: Self-Hosted / CI Deployment Checklist

In your CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Envoyer, or custom deploy script), run the following steps on each release:

# 1. Install PHP & JS dependencies and compile Vite assets (requires VITE_REVERB_* in .env)
composer install --no-dev --no-interaction --prefer-dist --optimize-autoloader
npm ci && npm run build

# 2. Link public storage (for chat attachments) and run database migrations
php artisan storage:link
php artisan migrate --force

# 3. Cache Laravel configuration, routes, views, and events
php artisan optimize

# 4. Signal queue workers and Reverb to reload code on next cycle
php artisan queue:restart
php artisan reverb:restart