Week 5: Laravel Security Best Practices + Deployment

Secure your app like a pro and take it live — from CSRF protection to deploying on a real VPS with a custom domain.

Laravel Security Essentials

Laravel provides powerful security features out of the box. This week you'll learn how to:

  • ✅ Validate user input and sanitize data
  • ✅ Protect routes with middleware
  • ✅ Use CSRF tokens properly
  • ✅ Secure authentication with guards
  • ✅ Implement rate limiting to prevent brute-force attacks
  • ✅ Escape output to prevent XSS
  • ✅ Use .env and config files securely

Deploy Your Laravel App to Production

Learn how to deploy your Laravel project to a VPS like DigitalOcean or Linode. Configure Nginx, PHP, MySQL, and deploy using Git or SFTP.

  • Setting up a Ubuntu VPS (with SSH)
  • Installing Nginx, PHP, Composer & Laravel
  • Uploading your project from local to VPS
  • Setting file permissions correctly
  • Connecting your MySQL database
  • Pointing a custom domain to your server
  • Configuring SSL with Let's Encrypt

Secure & Launch the Blog App

Apply everything you've learned to your Laravel blog project. Add middleware protections, validation rules, and then deploy it live so the world can access it from a real domain.

Why This Matters

Many developers can build apps — few can secure and deploy them. These are essential skills that make you production-ready and set you apart as a serious Laravel developer.

Outcomes

  • ✅ Build secure Laravel applications
  • ✅ Prevent common web attacks
  • ✅ Deploy Laravel projects to the web
  • ✅ Serve your app from a real domain with HTTPS