Hosting and Deployment

Introduction

This guide covers the various hosting and deployment options for your BowPHP application. Whether you use a traditional server or containers, you will find the necessary configurations here.

Production prerequisites

Before deploying, make sure your production environment has:

• PHP >= 8.1 with the required extensions
• A web server (Apache, Nginx)
• Composer for dependency management
• Write access to the var/ and public/ directories

Web server configuration

Apache

Create or edit the .htaccess file in the public/ directory:

public/.htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  <IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
    Options -MultiViews -Indexes
  </IfModule>

  RewriteEngine On

  # Redirect to HTTPS (optional)
  # RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
  # RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

  # Handle existing files
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Virtual Host configuration:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/domain.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName domain.com
  ServerAlias www.domain.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/domain/public

  <Directory /var/www/domain/public>
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
  </Directory>

  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Enable the site and the required modules:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2ensite domain.conf
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Nginx

/etc/nginx/sites-available/domain

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;

  server_name domain.com www.domain.com;
  root /var/www/domain/public;
  index index.php;

  # Logs
  access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
  error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

  # Static file handling
  location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|css|js|svg|woff|woff2|ttf|eot)$ {
    expires 1y;
    add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
  }

  # Routing to index.php
  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
  }

  # PHP processing
  location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;
  }

  # Security: block access to sensitive files
  location ~ /\.(env|git|htaccess) {
    deny all;
  }
}

Enable the site:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/domain /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx

Deployment with Docker

Dockerfile

Dockerfile

FROM php:8.2-fpm-alpine

# Install PHP extensions
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo pdo_mysql opcache

# Install Composer
COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer

# Working directory
WORKDIR /var/www/html

# Copy files
COPY . .

# Install dependencies
RUN composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

# Permissions
RUN chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html \
    && chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/var \
    && chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/public

EXPOSE 9000

CMD ["php-fpm"]

Docker Compose

docker-compose.yml

version: '3.8'

services:
  app:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html
    depends_on:
      - database
    networks:
      - bow-network

  nginx:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html
      - ./docker/nginx/default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
    depends_on:
      - app
    networks:
      - bow-network

  database:
    image: mysql:8.0
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: secret
      MYSQL_DATABASE: bow_app
      MYSQL_USER: bow
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: secret
    volumes:
      - db-data:/var/lib/mysql
    networks:
      - bow-network

volumes:
  db-data:

networks:
  bow-network:
    driver: bridge

docker/nginx/default.conf

server {
  listen 80;
  index index.php;
  root /var/www/html/public;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass app:9000;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
  }
}

Start the containers:

docker-compose up -d

Production configuration

Environment variables

Configure your .env.json file for production:

.env.json

{
  "APP_NAME": "Mon Application",
  "APP_ENV": "production",
  "APP_DEBUG": false,
  "APP_KEY": "votre-cle-secrete-generee",
  "APP_URL": "https://domain.com",

  "DB_CONNECTION": "mysql",
  "DB_HOST": "localhost",
  "DB_PORT": 3306,
  "DB_DATABASE": "production_db",
  "DB_USERNAME": "prod_user",
  "DB_PASSWORD": "mot-de-passe-securise"
}

Important

• Set APP_DEBUG to false in production
• Use strong and unique passwords
• Generate a new APP_KEY for each environment

Optimizations

After deployment, run these commands to optimize performance:

# Install dependencies without dev packages
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

# Clear and warm up the cache
php bow cache:clear
php bow config:cache

# Optimize the autoloader
composer dump-autoload --optimize

Directory permissions

# www-data owner for the web server
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/domain

# Write permissions for the required directories
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/domain
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/domain/var
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/domain/public

Shared hosting

For shared hosting providers (OVH, o2switch, etc.):

1. Upload your project via FTP or Git
2. Point the domain to the public/ directory
3. Configure the .env.json file with your settings
4. Run Composer via SSH if available:

cd /home/user/www/domain
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Document Root configuration

If you cannot change the document root, move the contents of public/ to the root and adjust the paths in index.php.

SSL/HTTPS

Let's Encrypt with Certbot

# Install Certbot
sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

# Generate the certificate
sudo certbot --nginx -d domain.com -d www.domain.com

# Automatic renewal
sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Monitoring and Logs

Application logs

BowPHP logs are located in var/logs/:

# Follow the logs in real time
tail -f var/logs/bow.log

# Search for errors
grep -i "error" var/logs/bow.log

Log rotation

Configure logrotate to prevent log files from growing indefinitely:

/etc/logrotate.d/bow-app

/var/www/domain/var/logs/*.log {
    daily
    missingok
    rotate 14
    compress
    delaycompress
    notifempty
    create 0640 www-data www-data
}

Is something missing?

If you run into problems with the documentation or have suggestions to improve the documentation or the project in general, please open an issue for us, or send a tweet mentioning the Twitter account @bowframework or directly on github.