# Deploying Laravel on a shared hosting using only .htaccess

Making Laravel work on a shared hosting can be troublesome, because Laravel needs to have its _document root_ set to the `public` directory. This may not be configurable by a user or even desirable, when the server is hosting multiple websites.

Here's a simple method using only a `.htaccess` file placed in Laravel's root directory - e.g. alongside `app`, `bootstrap`, `config`, ... No changes whatsoever are necessary to your code.

The file rewrites all the requests so that requesting `/file.png` would in fact return `/public/file.png` and anything else is routed to `/public/index.php`. This also ensures that nothing outside the `public` folder can be accessed, thereby protecting any sensitive files like `.env` or `database/*`.


## The simple method

This method assumes that `DOCUMENT_ROOT` is set properly by your Apache server. Try this first and use the 2nd method only if it doesn't work on your server.

**`.htaccess`**

    RewriteEngine on

    # serve existing files in the /public folder as if they were in /
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}public%{REQUEST_URI} -f
    RewriteRule (.+) /public/$1 [L]
    
    # route everything else to /public/index.php
    RewriteRule ^ /public/index.php [L]


## The slightly more complicated method

If your server doesn't set DOCUMENT\_ROOT properly, then you'll need to use an absolute path in RewriteCond. That is, an absolute path on the server's filesystem. You can get it by copying the following script to the directory where your Laravel installation will reside and visiting its URL - i.e. `http://example.com/get_doc_root.php`.

**`get_doc_root.php`**
    
    <?php
    echo getcwd();

This should result in something like `/var/www/example.com/web`. Use the following `.htaccess` file and replace `[[your path]]` with the actual path you got.

**`.htaccess`**

    RewriteEngine on

    # serve existing files in the /public folder as if they were in /
    RewriteCond [[your path]]/public%{REQUEST_URI} -f
    RewriteRule (.+) /public/$1 [L]
    
    # route everything else to /public/index.php
    RewriteRule ^ /public/index.php [L]

In our example case, the RewriteCond line would look like this:

    RewriteCond /var/www/example.com/web/public%{REQUEST_URI} -f