I run a Laravel website on a Linux server. I have a releases directory that contains the Laravel installation:

/vhosts/website/releases/version17

And then a symlink that points to that release:

/vhosts/website/live > releases/version17

The website vhost points to /vhosts/website/live (which in turn obviously points to the version17 release).

When I want to release a new version/build of my website, I will upload a completely new standalone Laravel installation to /vhosts/website/releases/version18 and then I will simply change the symlink to point to version18 now.

I like this strategy because I can instantly/atomically push a new version live without altering the old site files. This means that if something goes wrong I can easily roll back to the previous version simply by pointing the symlink back to release17.

I know some people prefer to use something like git to deploy your code and overwrite your site files, but I really hate doing this and relying on some 3rd party utility to properly rollback changes if something goes wrong. The symlink approach is simple and it makes it impossible to screw stuff up.

Now on to my question. Obviously each release of the Laravel files has an app/storage/logs folder. When I replace the site with a new version, I don't have all my old logs from the previous release. It's a brand new fresh directory. I would like to maintain my logs between versions.

Some options I have considered: 1. Copying the log files to the new release before going live. 2. Creating a log directory outside the releases directory and using symlinks.

I'm not sure which solution would be best practice. What is the best approach to solving this problem? Are there other options I have not considered?

Also, are there other files besides the logs that I should also be maintaining between releases?